148 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and can be got by " self-alienation," is not " self -alienation," as defined 

 by Mr. Harris, too much to pay for it ? Whatever the value of the 

 knowledge, who, for the sake of getting it, could reasonably spend the 

 best years of his life, or any of his years, in trying to make himself a 

 Roman and a Greek rolled into one ? And who of all this breathing: 

 world has tried it and succeeded ? Has Mr. Harris ? Can he himself 

 think in the idioms of the Greeks and Latins, and give his thoughts 

 their forms and words ? I do him the credit to believe that he can 

 not, but, if he could, the fact, I venture to suggest; would rather ex- 

 plain his alleged obscurity in the use of his own language than prove 

 the necessity of mastering theirs ; for it would be only natural that 

 one who had carried " self -alienation " to this length should not be at 

 home in his vernacular. He who travels out of himself so far will be 

 apt never to get back again. In his case there would be no " Return of 

 the Native." The " grand tour " would finish his education, no doubt, 

 in the primary sense of the word. A kind of culture such a man 

 might have, but it would not be liberal culture, to which, on the con- 

 trary, it would bear scarcely more resemblance than a Strasburg 

 goose to the noble fowl apostrophized in the lines of Bryant. It 

 would be an intellectual monstrosity. But " self-alienation " to this 

 degree is happily out of the question. For all, except one in a myriad, 

 it is simply impossible. This explodes the argument as put by Mr. 

 Harris. If the study of Latin and Greek to the only pitch adequate is 

 not a possibility, what is the use of studying them at all ? Mr. Harris 

 can have no answer, unless he recasts his argument, which he can 

 hardly do, I think, to any better purpose. 



For, is there a modicum of truth in his paradox ? In what sense 

 is " self -alienation " in any degree " necessary to self-knowledge," or, 

 which is more to the purpose, self-culture, because the end of liberal 

 education, as President Eliot says, is " not knowledge but power " ? 

 The true condition of culture is self-activity, and how far is this deter- 

 mined by that "self-alienation" which consists in projecting one's 

 self into the idioms of a dead language ? Nearly as far, perhaps, as 

 would be the corporal activity of one who should take a " header " into 

 the Dead Sea, and essay to cleave its dense waves, beating against his 

 breast like sledge-hammers. A dead language is the Dead Sea of 

 thought, if it may not be more aptly likened to the Sea of Tranquillity 

 in the moon. We think in our mother-tongue only, through which 

 only, therefore, our self-activity is determined, and by which only, for 

 that reason, we cultivate our minds. Our mother-tongue is the sole 

 medium of our mental development. Only by means of it can we 

 even self-alienate ourselves. A dead language is a counteractive in- 

 strumentality ; for which reason we can no more develop our minds 

 freely in Greek or Latin than we can develop our muscles in " twisted 

 gyves." Studying to think in a dead language is shackling the mind, 

 instead of liberating it, and must lead not to a free but to an arrested 



