568 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 
of books that the natives of one section have great difficulty in compre- 
hending one another. Historically considered, the attitude of intelli- 
gent men toward foreign languages presents some interesting aspects. 
From about 500 B.c. until well into the third century, everybody who 
laid any claim to be educated or even well informed, spoke Greek, no 
matter what his native speech might be. The reader of the history of 
antiquity meets with ever-recurring surprises at the wide dissemination 
of a language that is now considered particularly difficult. The utility 
of this knowledge is never mentioned by any writer: it was taken for 
granted. While the Greeks themselves rarely knew any tongue but 
their own, all foreigners possessed a speaking knowledge of Greek. 
Quintillian, who taught in Rome in the first century, urges his pupils 
to learn Greek at the same time with their mother-tongue. But he 
deplores the prevalent custom of teaching Roman children Greek before 
they know Latin. Yet there were virtually neither grammars nor dic- 
tionaries. The language was either picked up from those who spoke it 
or systematically taught by private tutors. Young men of literary 
tastes often supplemented the instruction gained at home by a brief 
sojourn in some Greek city. It should be remarked, however, that the 
Greeks had no need to acquire any other language for either literature 
or science, since all that was worth knowing was accessible in their 
native speech. Roman literature is so pervaded with Greek ideas that 
it is in no sense an original product. It contains hardly a thought that 
may not be found in Greek. It was in government alone that the 
Romans developed their own ideas and profited by their own experience. 
Although the Greek thinkers wrote a great deal upon the theory and 
practise of administration, the populace paid no heed and failed every- 
where. It is a melancholy fact that they never learned wisdom from 
their constant succession of fiascoes repeated in every city throughout 
Greek lands. 
There is no best method of teaching foreign languages: the method 
needs to be adapted to the pupil and to the purpose for which a lan- 
guage is learned. If the mind is to be trained at the same time in 
logical thinking, the procedure will necessarily be different and the 
results much slower than when the memory of the learner is to be filled 
with words and phrases to express concepts which are already in exist- 
ence. Children learn languages because they can not help it; adults, 
because they want to. There is besides the much larger number who 
have to be taught for the reason that they are only half in earnest. It 
is this class of so-called students who furnish one of the serious prob- 
lems for teachers. If one wants to teach an adult foreigner the English 
language there is no better method than that which bears the name of 
M. Gouin. The teacher suits the action to the word or phrase. He 
stands, he sits down, he gets up, he points to his eyes, his forehead, his 
hair, and so on, each time using the appropriate words. If he knows 
