THE ACQUISITION OF LANGUAGE 541 



The only evolutionary tendency in language which we can recog- 

 nize is this tendency towards analysis, towards dismemberment. So 

 great an authority as Sir Charles Eliot, vice-chancellor of Sheffield 

 University, who perhaps knows a greater variety of languages than any 

 other man, from Portuguese to Eussian, from Turkish to Japanese, 

 languages of Central Africa and of the Polynesian Islands, tells me 

 that he considers that this progress favors thought. Gender, number, 

 case hamper language, restrict its flexibility, impede thought. A mono- 

 syllabic root-language, such as Chinese or Burmese, is a swifter and 

 more precise solvent of thought than are the highly inflected Bantu 

 tongues. If this be true — and it does not seem to me open to doubt — 

 it is easier to think in English than in Latin. 



The drilling of boys in languages of lower type than their own 

 must have some strange, mysterious sanction to justify its use. There 

 must be an explanation of the undeniably good results which have 

 followed this generalized, purposeless training — results which caused 

 those who were best qualified to judge to cling to it with such tenacity. 

 It is not of the schools of to-day that I am speaking. So many 

 reservations and qualifications would be necessary that I could not hope 

 that my thesis would be approved. The schoolmaster has for some 

 years been engaged in the process of sloughing his skin — a process 

 which he seems very reluctant to see accomplished. The rattle at the 

 end of his tail which so easily subdued the pupils under him has gone. 

 Yet he still clutches at his gold and purple scales. The lineaments of 

 Greek gods and Roman orators are still to be distinguished in the folds 

 of the sadly crumpled case with which he is so unwilling to part. He 

 feels strangely cold clad in nothing but his native wisdom. It is not 

 of this half-accomplished rejuvenescence that I wish to speak. Let us 

 go back to the golden days of grammar schools. It is not as long ago 

 as Mr. Gladstone's youth. Many of us of a younger generation experi- 

 enced their heroic rule. Assuredly it was not the content of the classics 

 which proved in our case of educative value. It could not, for the 

 reasons I have stated, have been the languages, as such. I have but 

 one explanation. It was the rebound on to English which the classical 

 drill produced. We were ceaselessly searching the pages of the dic- 

 tionary. We were learning new words. We were studying English 

 syntax. In my opinion any foreign language would have served equally 

 well to produce this rebound. Or it might have been brought about by 

 the intelligent paraphrasing, construing, analysis of English authors. 

 The last course would probably be the shortest road to the supreme 

 goal — skill in the use of the language in which we think and with 

 which we speak. 



