568 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



of books that the natives of one section have great difficulty in compre- 

 hending one another. Historically considered, the attitude of intelli- 

 gent men toward foreign languages presents some interesting aspects. 

 From about 500 B.C. until well into the third century, everybody who 

 laid any claim to be educated or even well informed, spoke Greek, no 

 matter what his native speech might be. The reader of the history of 

 antiquity meets with ever-recurring surprises at the wide dissemination 

 of a language that is now considered particularly difficult. The utility 

 of this knowledge is never mentioned by any writer: it was taken for 

 granted. While the Greeks themselves rarely knew any tongue but 

 their own, all foreigners possessed a speaking knowledge of Greek. 

 Quintillian, who taught in Eome in the first century, urges his pupils 

 to learn Greek at the same time with their mother-tongue. But he 

 deplores the prevalent custom of teaching Eoman children Greek before 

 they know Latin. Yet there were virtually neither grammars nor dic- 

 tionaries. The language was either picked up from those who spoke it 

 or systematically taught by private tutors. Young men of literary 

 tastes often supplemented the instruction gained at home by a brief 

 sojourn in some Greek city. It should be remarked, however, that the 

 Greeks had no need to acquire any other language for either literature 

 or science, since all that was worth knowing was accessible in their 

 native speech. Eoman literature is so pervaded with Greek ideas that 

 it is in no sense an original product. It contains hardly a thought that 

 may not be found in Greek. It was in government alone that the 

 Eomans developed their own ideas and profited by their own experience. 

 Although the Greek thinkers wrote a great deal upon the theory and 

 practise of administration, the populace paid no heed and failed every- 

 where. It is a melancholy fact that they never learned wisdom from 

 their constant succession of fiascoes repeated in every city throughout 

 Greek lands. 



There is no best method of teaching foreign languages : the method 

 needs to be adapted to the pupil and to the purpose for which a lan- 

 guage is learned. If the mind is to be trained at the same time in 

 logical thinking, the procedure will necessarily be different and the 

 results much slower than when the memory of the learner is to be filled 

 with words and phrases to express concepts which are already in exist- 

 ence. Children learn languages because they can not help it; adults, 

 because they want to. There is besides the much larger number who 

 have to be taught for the reason that they are only half in earnest. It 

 is this class of so-called students who furnish one of the serious prob- 

 lems for teachers. If one wants to teach an adult foreigner the English 

 language there is no better method than that which bears the name of 

 M. Gouin. The teacher suits the action to the word or phrase. He 

 stands, he sits down, he gets up, he points to his eyes, his forehead, his 

 hair, and so on, each time using the appropriate words. If he knows 



