THE ACQUISITION OF LANGUAGE 531 



profession — law, medicine, the Church or mercantile life — he has no 

 doubt as to the course of preliminary training. So far as one can 

 judge, his system was uniform and invariable for all kinds of mind, 

 for all walks in life — Greek and Latin driven in with the rod. " Boys, 

 be pure in heart," said Keate, the famous Eton Head Master ; " I'll 

 flog you if you are not." " Boys acquire a tolerable knowledge of 

 the dialects," said Johnson; "take in your knowledge through the 

 eye and ear if you can; but, if you fail to do this, I will undertake 

 to insert it through some other part of your personality." His recom- 

 mendations to his young friend are pellucidly ingenuous. He is to 

 apply himself to the languages and even to the dialects. There is 

 no pretence in this. No false issue is raised. Johnson does not for a 

 moment suggest that his young friend has anything to gain from the 

 subject-matter of JElian's or Xenophon's or Theocritus's works. The 

 scholars of the Eenaissance studied Latin and Greek for the sake of 

 getting at the writer's thought. They found that Greeks and Eomans 

 knew so much more than they did, and argued so keenly about what 

 they knew, that it seemed futile to medieval students to obtain knowl- 

 edge at first hand. Plato and Aristotle could teach them more than 

 they could ever find out for themselves. By the beginning of the 

 eighteenth century the wisdom of Plato and Aristotle had been ab- 

 sorbed into modern thought. The reason for studying Greek and 

 Latin had gone. Yet the languages had a firmer hold upon the schools 

 and universities than they had ever had before. Their study molded 

 the mind of Johnson, and has molded the minds of the greatest of our 

 statesmen, lawyers, philosophers ever since. 



Why should the languages produce such admirable results? John- 

 son does not recognize French, German, Italian as coming within the 

 category of languages when thinking of education. They may be useful 

 for business, or even for lighter employment; but they do not train 

 the mind. Why should languages which have lost their purpose as 

 means of communication possess virtues which living languages can not 

 acquire? In a limited sense their uselessness is their chief merit. 

 Amo, amas, amat. The boy who learns the meaning of j'aime or 

 ich Hebe might have an eye upon the possible application of this 

 knowledge; but amo, amas — he would not be understood even by a 

 modern Eoman maiden ! 



If attention is to be concentrated wholly upon language as a means, 

 there must be no risk of distraction due" to the contemplation of its 

 possible end. "Waiter, 'mrangs!" called the little boy in Punch. 

 " Oh, Freddy, that isn't the way to pronounce m-e-r-i-n-g-u-e-s ! " — 

 " It's the way to get 'em ! " When we are working at a living language 

 thought passes on ahead to the end to be gained. It is only when 

 a dead language is being studied that attention can be wholly devoted 

 to its form. A modern language is studied with a view to 'getting 



