462 A DISSERTATION ON THE 
advantage to the vast community and hive of 
industry around us. This may be true, yet the 
true and thorough philosophical mind will be far 
from deeming them useless. Names have a phi- 
losophy as well as the things which they repre- 
sent. Mind has to be improved as well as the 
matter to be considered upon which it experi- 
ments, speculates, calculates ; and in order to com- 
municate freely and fully with other minds, it is 
quite as necessary that it thoroughly comprehends 
the philosophy of the language through which it 
makes that communication, as the philosophy of 
the subjects which it has to communicate. Nor is 
it that alone which benefits mankind, in its civil 
capacity, which is to be considered as the legiti- 
mate standard of mental excellence. Whatever 
raises mind in the scale of intelligences—what- 
ever brings before it truth of any name, grade, or 
degree—only really and permanently, ennobles 
it. Mind has been formed for truth, and nothing 
but truth therefore, can satisfy it. And surely, 
if language be at all worthy of our study—if we 
spend a considerable portion of our youth, in 
acquiring a competent knowledge of the Latin 
and Greek tongues, as keys, to open to us the 
treasure-houses of the thoughts of antiquity and 
