124 Selections from Huxley 



tional languages you will know your own language better 

 than ever you did. So, I say, if the time given to educa- 

 tion permits, add Latin and German. Latin, because it is 

 the key to nearly one-half of English and to all the Ro- 

 5 mance languages; and German, because it is the key to 

 almost all the remainder of English, and helps you to 

 understand a race from whom most of us have sprung, 

 and who have a character and a literature of a fateful 

 force in the history of the world, such as probably has 



10 been allotted to those of no other people, except the Jews, 

 the Greeks, and ourselves. Beyond these, the essential and 

 the eminently desirable elements of all education, let each 

 man take up his special line the historian devote himself 

 to his history, the man of science to his science, the 



15 man of letters to his culture of that kind, and the artist to 

 his special pursuit. 



Bacon has prefaced some of his works with no more than 

 this: Franciscus Bacon sic cogitavit; let sic cogitavi be the 

 epilogue to what I have ventured to address to you 

 20 to-night. 



