Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/209

Rh to get a little nearer each other. They printed books of devotion, — a fact which irritates some; but would they have had the Greek classics printed for the natives, and works on metaphysics, science, and natural philosophy? Who could have read them? It is true that the printing-press does not seem to have accomplished much. But the obstacles in its way were like their enormous mountain-ranges, which kept forever apart, unless they met in war, tribes, if not races, whose dialects were inexchangeable. The printing-press had to make, not one Spanish-Indian or Aztec dictionary, but as many dictionaries as there were tongues. The natives refused the Spanish spelling-book, and continued to hate and tease the invaders. To-day this diversity of speech remains to prove that the failure of the printing-press does not constitute good ground for indictment. There are at least five distinct languages in Mexico, and millions of the people remain totally or partially ignorant of the official language of the republic.

There was, moreover, a political force always at work against the diffusion of education through the agencies of the Church. It was the same