Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/344

330 native tongue we know the precise sense of words only by the phrases in which they occur; taken separately, they have no determined meaning. A phrase cannot be translated unless it is comprehended, and, to secure this comprehension, we make the translation for the student by employing words to which he attaches no precise idea! How could the mind develop under such a muddle of a system?

—Not having determined in a precise manner the relative importance of the objects proposed in learning a language, the means are confounded with the end. To persevere a long time in translation, whether to understand the language, to speak it, or to write it, is to form a habit which excludes the possibility of thinking in that language, and retaining the phraseology for use in conversation.

In the absence of classification, and of principles known to be in harmony with the constitution of man and the nature of language, the true objects of study are forgotten, and the order which facilitates acquisition is reversed. Pedagogy based on a knowledge of principles is unhappily a science little known, and generally ignored by teachers and professors.

The natural application of these principles to the acquisition of our native language offers us an infallible guide and simple processes of marvelous efficacy. By what perversity or blindness are we kept from, the route traced for us by Nature? Why not avail ourselves of those powerful instincts, curiosity and imitation—especial sources of progress in the acquisition of language? Providence has given them to man to accomplish his destiny. It is an aberration of the human mind, it is almost an impiety, to reject them and seek other means for learning a second language.

Most authors of new methods make, it is true, the pretense of following Nature in their processes; but this is an illusion. Besides, they disagree among themselves, and consequently cannot all be true. Truth is one. There are not two ways of imitating Nature in attaining a particular end. All these methods and those of the university have this in common, that, in direct opposition to the laws of our organization, and the nature of language, they pretend to teach the speaking and writing of a foreign language, without depending upon reading and listening—without even making the least allusion to the necessity of thinking in that language. While public instruction perseveres in this false way, no young man will speak English or German on leaving college. He might be able, perhaps, in unconnected conversation, to pronounce some commonplace phrases, but he will not converse in the true meaning of the word.

The minister wishes that, after a little time, the classes should talk with their teacher in English and German; but what conversation can there be with professors, mostly foreigners, while the scholars are yet in the rudiments? The little they will have to say, which always