December 24, 1886. 



SCIENCE. 



613 



some education and no end of general informa- 

 tion, died a few weeks ago in one of the interior 

 cities of the state. He had been in this country 

 all of thirty years, but at the time of his death 

 could scarcely make himself understood in Eng- 

 lish. His associations, however, had always been 

 German : he had never cut himself loose from 

 them, and even in a foreign land had still been a 

 German among Germans. 



The position last stated is plainly the one taken 

 by the advocates of the natural method, and the 

 one upon which is based their terminology. The 

 pupil in the classroom is placed somewhat in the 

 position of a stranger in a strange land. He is 

 spoken to in a foreign language, and in the same 

 language is expected to give his reply. Gram- 

 mar and dictionary are unheeded, and upon this 

 fact great stress is laid. It is a simple exchange 

 of ideas, say its advocates, between teacher and 

 pupil, resulting, in a surprisingly short time, in a 

 complete mastery of the language the learner has 

 been encouraged to use. By and by authors are 

 read in the original. Curiously enough, in the last 

 stages grammar is taken up, makingthus its knowl- 

 edge the capstone of the linguistic pyramid. 



Now, there seems to be no reasonable doubt 

 that instruction of this kind, if long enough con- 

 tinued, would ultimately result in giving to the 

 pupil a certain knowledge of a language. He 

 might leam, with limitations, to understand it, 

 and he even might for a time speak it with some 

 degree of fluency and correctness. This much 

 must be granted. The pupil, however, has only 

 arrived at this result by the expenditure of much 

 valuable time that might have been better em- 

 ployed. The knowledge that he has acquired is 

 inexact, and beyond a few parrot phrases it will 

 improve the earliest opportunity to depart from 

 him utterly. 



The one great mistake of the natural system 

 lies in its neglect to provide a suitable gram- 

 matical foundation for the superstructure it pro- 

 poses to raise, — that it leaves for the top what it 

 ought to have started with at the bottom. An 

 argument is, however, in this way furnished in 

 favor of the system, plausible, to be sure, but 

 unreal and misleading. The teachers of the new 

 method thus bring forward as an advantage that 

 they do away with a text-book of grammar and 

 its attendant drudgeries. One exponent of the 

 principles of the system holds not only the sup- 

 posed horrors of learning grammar, but of teach- 

 ing it, hysterically up to the light, and exclaims, 

 "Nothing can solace him (the teacher) for the 

 ennui which grammars cause him : this is a suf- 

 fering which kills, or at least shortens life, and 

 takes from the mind all freshness and vigor." 



There is no doubt but that there is some drudg- 

 ery — call it that, if you please — connected vrith 

 grammar. There is more or less of it in learning 

 every thing else, —the alphabet, the multiplica- 

 tion-table, history, or any science. The natural 

 method would here offer us a royal road to learn- 

 ing, and it is not strange that many will be found 

 willing to traverse it. A foreigner, surrounded 

 by people speaking a strange language, will indis- 

 putably learn to speak the language he constantly 

 hears. If he hears it correctly, he will speak it 

 correctly, without perhaps ever having heard that 

 the language has a oiass of inflections and syn- 

 tactical agreements that some long-experienced 

 scholar has carefully collected and summarized 

 in a grammar. It is not, however, for a moment 

 to be imagined that this supposititious person has 

 learned his language either as rapidly or as well 

 as if he had had a grammar to help him with its 

 ready-made experience. The exertion of learning- 

 is not to be avoided, and has not been avoided ; 

 and the result is the same whether the process be 

 drawn out and diluted with great expense of 

 time, and foohsh repetition, or condensed and 

 abbreviated with such aids as are at hand. There 

 is, for example, no avoiding the fact that the 

 majority of French nouns ending in al form 

 their plurals in aux, whether we learn the 

 whole truth at one efiiort from a grammar, or 

 whether we attain it finally by induction from 

 individual examples. The acquisition, in the one 

 case, is, too, just as real as in the other ; the gen- 

 eralization learned from the grammar must also 

 necessarily long precede its formulation by induc- 

 tion ; and, having been thus incorporated in one's 

 knowledge, it can immediately be put to use. A 

 grammar saves time by simply categorizing 

 forms ; and it is not the rules themselves, it is 

 their sure application, that is sought. All rules 

 for language change can, of course, be established 

 by induction after a sufiiciently large accumula- 

 tion of facts by experience ; but, after such a com- 

 plete knowledge of a language has been attained 

 as might enable one to formulate general laws, 

 the need of a general law has passed away. A 

 purely inductive method teaches the words of a 

 language individually and separately, and does 

 not abridge the labor by treating them in classes. 

 Grammar, according to the foregoing, is, then, to 

 be considered, in a modern language particularly, 

 simply as a means to a definite end. It is not the 

 end itself, and it is to be greatly doubted whether 

 any teacher of a modern language regards it so. 

 It would be a very foolish and incompetent in- 

 structor who would endeavor to teach a language 

 solely from the grammar, to isolate it from con- 

 versation and from its literature. A language 



