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 struggling to unlearn every familiar word and to remember its literary equivalent, learning out of text-books which it is a lesson in itself to understand has a large part of his mental energy diverted from the understanding of facts, which is, after all, the main object of his education, to the understanding of words. Just think how the difficulties of an English child would be increased, if in our text-books, words like ‘steed’, ‘hound’, ‘occiput’ were invariably substituted for ‘horse’, ‘dog’, ‘head’, etc. and all words were written in their Chaucerian instead of their modern form! Egyptians themselves often acknowledge that too many boys, on leaving schools, are unable to write a correct letter or essay, a charge which could hardly ever be brought against any decently educated school boy in Europe. It is clear, then, that ten years of school are not enough to master this dead language.

6. Secondly, there can be no greater check on the diffusion of knowledge among the masses than the existence of a separate written idiom. The difficulty of reading and understanding what is read is sufficiently great to deter the majority from opening a book at all. This must especially be the case with the lower classes, who mostly leave school after completing only an elementary course. The existence of popular text-books on practical subjects, one of the most effective means of spreading knowledge and of improving the well-being of the people in Europe is, of course, rendered impossible. The prejudice against employing the common terms for things would be too strong even for the writer of an agricultural primer. So ingrained is this prejudice in the minds of the educated classes that police officers taking down evidence from the mouth of a witness will convert the words actually spoken into their literary equivalents.

7. This strangely unpractical devotion to a dead language is found in many Asiatic countries, with its invariable 1387 Minute of Dissent