Page:Aesthetic Papers.djvu/117

Rh and reflections. On the ethereal element upon which the spirit of man works with the ethereal instrument voice, is this history carved; or rather in this element has human thought vegetated, not to the eye, but to the ear.

And perhaps it may take no more years to gain a key to the expressed mind of man, than are devoted now to learn by rote a few books in Greek and Latin; and which, after all, are so learned that only the exceptions among the university-educated (as the frequenters of our partial colleges are, as if in mockery, called) can read Latin and Greek with pleasure to themselves. Still fewer can write these languages, and almost none can speak them. Philology should be studied as the most important of sciences, not only for the sake of knowing the works of art and science that the various languages contain, but because words themselves are growths of nature and works of art, capable of giving the highest delight as such; and because their analysis and history reveal the universe in its symbolic character. Moreover, no language, learned in the light of philology, could be forgotten. Indeed, it would seem as if no knowledge conveyed in words could be forgotten, if the words were understood as the living beings that they are when seen in their origin.

But it would take a volume to unfold this subject adequately. The value of language-learning to discipline the mind into power and refinement has been always blindly felt; but, not being understood as well as felt, it has not justified itself to the practical sense especially of this country; and nothing is more common than to hear all study of languages, except of those to be used in commercial and other present intercourse, condemned as at best a costly and unprofitable luxury. These languages are therefore learned by rote, more or less, on such a substratum of Latin and Greek as is thought necessary to facilitate their acquisition. In the best instances, there is some study of idiomatic construction, some investigation of the composition of sentences, as characteristic of a people; but the words themselves are used as counters, and there is no investigation of their composition, and their correspondent relation to the nature they echo on the one side, and the thought they symbolize on the other.