THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LANGUAGE. 835 



pied with. Distinctions are made first by the finer minds; then 

 they become common to all. Intelligence consists largely in per- 

 ceiving the difference between similar things. It is imparted, in a 

 certain degree, by language, for, in order to recognize differences 

 which the best endowed were at first the only ones to feel, the view 

 of each one becomes keener. 



From what has gone before, we draw the conclusion that lan- 

 guage designates things incompletely and inexactly. Substantives 

 are labels attached to things, and include just that part of the truth 

 which a name can contain. The names most adequate to their ob- 

 jects in our languages are abstract nouns, because they represent a 

 simple operation of the mind. When I pronounce the word com- 

 pressibility or immortality, all that is in the idea is contained in the 

 word; but if I take a real being, an object existing in Nature, it 

 will be impossible for language to put into the word all the notions 

 which that being or that object awakens in the mind. Language 

 is forced to select. Among all the notions it chooses one, and 

 thus creates a name which at once becomes a sign. 



There is no reason to fear that the importance of language in 

 education will ever be depreciated. We can trust that to the 

 mothers. Their first impulse is to speak to the child, their highest 

 joy to hear it speak. Then come masters of all degrees and sorts, 

 each of whose art supposes language. In every country, ancient 

 and modern, language has supplied the instrument and the prime 

 material of instruction. This universal agreement is natural. We 

 shall have no difficulty in understanding the nature of the action of 

 language on the mind if we reflect that we do not, any of us, receive 

 it in block all at once, but are each obliged to reconstitute it anew. 

 An apprenticeship takes place which, although it escapes notice and 

 is not recognized even by the one who passes through it, is never- 

 theless a sort of training school of mankind. Since the best teachers 

 are those who give us the most to do ourselves, what more profitable 

 study can we conceive for the child? What attention is required 

 simply to distinguish the word ! We have to disengage it from what 

 precedes and from what follows it; to discriminate between the per- 

 manent and the variable elements, and to understand that the per- 

 manent element is committed to us to handle in our turn and subject 

 to the same variations. The simplest phrase is an invitation to 

 decompose the thought and see what each word contributes to it. 

 The adjective and the verb are the first abstractions comprehended 

 by the child. Imagine the effort which the ancient languages re- 

 quired even to speak them passably! There was a whole chapter 

 of inner life in it which began again in each person. The people 

 carried within themselves an unwritten grammar, which indeed 



