LIBERAL EDUCATION. 13 



I think that we monstrously overrate the educating value of the 

 mere process of learning other languages ; but with the mother-tongue 

 the case is altogether different. Here the mastery of form and substance 

 can proceed pari passu. The mother-tongue is the only one which 

 can stand to our modern liberal education in the relation in which the 

 classical tongues stood to the scholars of the revival of learning. It 

 mio-ht be said that Greek and Latin were mother-tongues to them as 

 scholars, because it was through them alone that they reached the 

 thoughts which really educated them. They were not brought up on 

 empty words and barren syntax ; they studied no grammars, for gram- 

 mars were non-existent. Their minds were really nourished on the 

 philosophy of Plato, and Cicero's eloquence, and Homer's poetry, and 

 the lessons not the words they found in Tacitus and Thucydides. Now, 

 when we have a philosophy, a history, a poetry, a law, an ethics, which 

 embody all that is valuable in classical literature, together with all the 

 progress of thought has produced through these later centuries, we not 

 only fail to use them as those older scholars used their older instru- 

 ments, really and efficiently, but we equally fail in using the older 

 ones. We abandon both to feed our boys on a husk without a kernel. 

 What wonder that our higher education is struck with barrenness ? 



When, therefore, I propose modern language-study instead of an- 

 cient, as a chief instrument of school education, I mean much more than 

 the mere substitution of the study of some modern language as lan- 

 guage, for some ancient language as language — German, for instance, 

 instead of Greek, as has sometimes been suggested. This would be 

 the mere semblance of a remedy, for the difficulty consists in the enor- 

 mous overrating, by what I have called the grindstone-theory, of the 

 educating value of the study of the mere structure and vocabulary of 

 any strange language whatever. It has sometimes been doubted if 

 we can ever really know more than one tongue, and certainly all our 

 deeper mental processes go on in that one we know best. If that is a 

 foreign one, it is because we have lost a mother to gain a step-mother; 

 and a stepmother she will ever remain. What is very certain is, that 

 too many of the recipients of our present education, in seeking to pos- 

 sess themselves of more than one language, end with having none 

 whatever. Neglecting to develop their minds through the instrumen- 

 tality of their mother-tongue, and never, therefore, really knowing it, 

 they equally fail in providing themselves with any substitute ; with 

 Shakspeare's pedants, " they have been at a great feast of languages, 

 and stolen the scraps." 



My position, therefore, is that, so far as language-study shall form 

 a part of the elementary discipline of the liberal education of the 

 future, the centre and pivot of it all will hereafter be the scientific 

 study of the mother-tongue. I anticipate something almost like ridi- 

 cule for this proposition on the part of those — and they are many — who 

 undervalue our native language so far as to believe it to be incapable 



