Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/755

Rh able to share the experience and knowledge of other individuals of his time, as also those of past generations; without which each man would, like the lower animals, be limited to his instinct and to his own particular experience. That therefore the improvement of language was formerly the first and most necessary work of a growing race, and that the most refined perfection of its comprehension and its use is, and must ever be, the primary problem in the education of each individual, is undoubted. The culture of modern European nations has a peculiarly intimate connection with the study of the remains of antiquity; and, thereby, directly with the study of language. With the latter study was associated that of the forms of thought, which are coined in speech; logic and grammar, that is, according to the original meaning of the words, the art of speaking and the art of writing, both taken in the highest sense, have therefore been hitherto the natural hinge-points of mental education.

But while language is the means of handing down and preserving truth once recognized, we must not forget that its study teaches nothing as to how fresh truth is to be found. Similarly, logic shows how, from the proposition which forms the major of a syllogism, conclusions are to be drawn; but it can tell us nothing as to whence this proposition has come. He who will convince himself of its independent truth must, on the other hand, begin with knowledge of the individual cases which fall under the law, and which afterward, if this have been established, may doubtless also be accepted as deductions from the law. But only where a knowledge of the law is one which has been communicated by others, does it actually take precedence of knowledge of the deductions, and, in such a case, the treatises of the old formal logic assume their undeniable practical importance.

Thus all these studies do not themselves lead us to the proper source of knowledge—do not bring us face to face with the reality which we seek to know. There is therefore, undoubtedly, a danger in communicating to each one, by preference, a knowledge the source of which he has not personally contemplated. Comparative mythology and the criticism of the metaphysical systems can tell a great deal of how figurative word-expression has in time been exalted to the importance of real knowledge, and even become valued as ultimate wisdom.

While fully recognizing, then, the significance (not to be sufficiently appreciated) of the finely-elaborated art of communicating the acquired knowledge of others, and receiving in return such communications from others, in regard to the mental improvement of our race; while also recognizing the importance attaching to the contents of the classical writings, for the cultivation of the moral and aesthetic sentiments, for the development of an intimate knowledge of human feelings, conceptions, and conditions of culture; we must yet hold that an important element is wanting from the exclusively literary-logical