Page:Christian Greece and Living Greek.djvu/270

 248 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. which is spoken by seven million people is for- cibly reduced to a defunct language. A school which is proud of its scientific teach- ers should teach nothing that has been proved, and also been admitted, to be unscientific and false. Neither should this be done even with a really defunct language. Nor does it ever hap- pen in regard to any dead or living language, except in the case of the Greek. Instruction in the living languages is not given with an in- vented pronunciation, and even in teaching dead Latin and Hebrew a pronunciation is taught in the schools which is preeminently based upon the living tradition. Latin is taught as it is transmitted through its pronunciation in Italy, and through the pronunciation of the Italian lan- guage; Hebrew as it is really spoken by the Portuguese Jews. Only with the Greek an exception is made by the school, and just in this case the existence of a living Greek language ought to be a reminder to place instruction in close relation to life, so that the scholar might later employ it for prac- tical purposes. The phrase ought to be borne in mind : Non scholcB, sed vitce discimus. It is certainly very discouraging to the scholar who, having devoted years to the study of the