THE CLASSICS THAT EDUCATE US. 149 



development. " Self -alienation," if I may be allowed to aphorize a 

 little, too, is self -repression, which will stunt the developing intellect, 

 though it may stimulate the developed one. Culture, be it observed, 

 is not capacity but the growth of capacity, and that which might 

 energize the one would paralyze the other, the full-formed organ de- 

 riving strength from what may deaden the rudiment. The study of 

 foreign languages, in place of being the means of culture, is simply a 

 means of knowledge, and the study of the dead languages is not a 

 necessary or convenient means to that. Our mother-tongue alone, as 

 the instrument of our thinking, is the instrument of our culture. It is 

 hence the thing of all things that we should master first and master 

 thoroughly. In this philosophy and common sense are at one. 



But the obvious way to master our mother-tongue is to study tJuit, 

 and not the mother-tongue of somebody else to study it in its own 

 masterpieces, not excluding indeed its adopted ones, whether from the 

 Greek or Latin or any other original, but studying these in 'its own 

 idioms, forms, and words, not in theirs. If there is to be any aliena- 

 tion in the matter, let the Greeks and Latins suffer it ; they are dead, 

 and it will not hurt them. Us it will hurt of necessity, since it will 

 hinder our mastery of the tongue whereby we think, and by which, 

 consequently, we master our faculties. Here, doubtless, I shall b.e 

 confronted with the necessity of " self-alienation " as a means of know- 

 ing our mother-tongue itself, and not unlikely be reminded of Goethe's 

 aphorism, of which Mr. Harris's is a tolerable equivalent : " He who 

 is acquainted with no foreign tongue knows nothing of his own." To 

 this there are two answers : it is irrational, and imposing facts contra- 

 dict it. Strictly speaking, the converse of the proposition is true : he 

 who knows nothing of his own tongue knows nothing of any. other, for 

 it is through his own that he becomes acquainted with another. The 

 literal aphorism is litei*ally preposterous. Assuming that it means in 

 reality, what is the least admissible meaning, that he who is acquainted 

 with no foreign tongue is not a master of his own, it is still irrational. 

 What constitutes the mastery of a tongue ? The " accurate and re- 

 fined use " of it. And what, by common consent, is the criterion of 

 this use ? The established practice of the best writers and speakers of 

 the tongue. Then how can the use be acquired better than by the 

 study of these writers and speakers ? Nay, how otherwise can it be 

 acquired at all ? And why is the study of any other tongue necessary ? 

 We can conform to the use of the best writers and speakers only by 

 studying their works, and, when we have done this effectually, we have 

 nothing else to do ; the habit of conformity is established the use is 

 acquired. One does not learn to employ the brush by handling the 

 chisel, or to shoot a rifle by throwing a boomerang ; yet he could do 

 either about as well as learn to use his native tongue by studying a 

 foreign one, from which the incidental gain to his vocabulary would 

 be offset by the loss to his syntax, while the linguistic learning that he 



