Foreign Languages 7 



nature in a spirit that was entirely dififerent, and Hux- 

 ley, by combining what he was taught in England with 

 what he learned from German methods, came to his 

 own investigations with a wider mind. But his con- 

 quest of French and German brought with it advant- 

 ages in addition to these technical gains. There is no 

 reason to believe that he troubled himself with gram- 

 matical details and with the study of these languages 

 as subjects in themselves. He acquired them simply 

 to discover the new ideas concealed in them, and he 

 by no means confined himself to the reading of foreign 

 books on the subjects of his own studies. He read 

 French and German poetry, literature, and philosophy, 

 and so came to have a knowledge of the ideas of those 

 outside his own race on all the great problems that 

 interest mankind. A good deal has been written as to 

 the narrowing tendency of scientific pursuits, but with 

 Huxley, as with all the scientific men the present writer 

 has known, the mechanical necessity of learning to 

 read other languages has brought with it that wide 

 intellectual sympathy which is the beginning of all cult- 

 ure and which is not infrequently missed by those who 

 have devoted themselves to many grammars and a vSin- 

 gle literature. The old proverb, " Whatever is worth 

 doing is worth doing well," has only value when 

 " well " is properly interpreted. Although the science 

 of language is as great as any science, it is not the sci- 

 ence of language, but the practical interpretation of it, 

 that is of value to most people, and there is much to be 

 said for the method of anatomists like Huxley, who 

 passed lightly over grammatical niinuticB and went 

 straight with a dictionary to the reading of each new 

 tongue. 



After a short period of apprenticeship, or sometimes 



