Page:Christian Greece and Living Greek.djvu/288

 266 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. mutes may learn to read and even to speak, and doubtless to use visual words in thinking, but it is with much more than ordinary difficulty. It is a fact of great significance that those deaf- mutes who have once been able to hear, have a great advantage over those deaf from birth, not only in learning to read and speak, but in gen- eral mental capacity. Let us apply the above facts to the method of learning another language than our own. There is the prevailing school and college method to learn the language by force of mem- ory from grammar and dictionary. By this method it is conceded that the ability to con- verse is not acquired, but it has been generally assumed that by it the pupil could at least learn to read, and perhaps, if diligent, to write to ad- vantage. Yet, even for this purpose alone, the grammatical method must be a failure in so far as it neglects to train the pupil to a quick per- ception and a ready utterance of the sounds of the language, for we have seen that the auditory and motor-speech centres do an essential part of the work in reading and writing. Even if direct associations from the visual centre may be culti- vated, as in the case of deaf-mutes, why, instead of an easy and natural method, choose an un-