104 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



undoubted utility in certain walks of life, and for those who 

 are to follow these walks of life it is desirable ; but in very 

 many occupations it is of no utility at all, and the time devoted 

 to it, which is usually excessive, even if the acquisition were 

 important, is doubly excessive. I am very far from erecting 

 practical utility as a standard by which the desirability of 

 subjects of education should be gauged ; but if languages are 

 not to be learnt for their practical utility, I am at a loss to find 

 any other reason for their cultivation. We are told that the 

 learning of a second and third language, especially if it is a dead 

 language, is a splendid means of cultivating the mind — another 

 superstition, which rests upon no evidence whatever as far as 

 I have been able to ascertain ; and we are told that the acquisi- 

 tion of the dead languages is morally and intellectually elevating, 

 a safeguard against materialism, a refining and spiritualising 

 influence, without which a man remains destitute of all high 

 and worthy motives, sunk in debased and sordid aims and 

 pursuits. I have examined this assertion again and again, 

 and I can find no evidence whatever to support it. It is an 

 assertion as baseless as that the wearing of a charm will ward 

 off misfortune ; and the same cast of mind that entertains the 

 one superstition cherishes the other. And the devotion of 

 disproportionate time and attention to languages, whether dead 

 or living, in the scheme of education, is not merely waste ; it 

 is actively pernicious and baneful. It does irreparable harm 

 to the growing mind. It fosters and increases that logolatry, 

 that worship of words, that inability to distinguish between 

 words and things, that pseudo-solution of problems by the 

 invention of neat phrases, that pursuit of such flimsy will-o'-the- 

 wisps as socialism, war to end war, destruction of militarism, 

 efficiency, democracy, spiritual influence, and so forth, which to 

 nearly all the people who use them have no clear meaning, but 

 are mere " words of power "like Abracadabra and Kogula. The 

 pursuit of words is no less eager, the worship of words is no 

 less devoted, in science than in other realms of endeavour, and 

 in medicine is rampant. The more " scientific " the medical 

 practitioner, the more importance he attaches to diagnosis ; 

 and diagnosis means in nearly every case the discovery of an 

 appropriate name, and means no more. Never have I been 

 consulted about a difficult case without the question being 

 put to me, What do you call it ? And when I have attached 



