84 PRINCIPAL SUBJECTS OF EDUCATION 



of the mistakes of philosophers have arisen from ques- 

 tions about words ; and one of the safest ways of deliver- 

 ing yourself from the bondage of words is, to know how 

 ideas look in words to which you are not accustomed. 

 That is one reason for the study of language; another 

 reason is, that it opens new fields in art and in science. 

 Another is the practical value of such knowledge ; and 

 yet another is this, that if your languages are properly 

 chosen, from the time of learning the additional lan- 

 guages you will know your own language better than 

 ever you did. So, I say, if the time given to education 

 permits, add Latin and German. Latin, because it 

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

 Romance 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 prob- 

 ably has been allotted to those of no other people, 

 except the Jews, the Greeks, and ourselves. Beyond 

 these, the essential and the eminently desirable ele- 

 ments 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 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 cogi- 

 tavi" be the epilogue to what I have ventured to ad- 

 dress to you to-night. 



