Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/574

568 of books that the natives of one section have great difficulty in comprehending one another. Historically considered, the attitude of intelligent men toward foreign languages presents some interesting aspects. From about 500 B.C. until well into the third century, everybody who laid any claim to be educated or even well informed, spoke Greek, no matter what his native speech might be. The reader of the history of antiquity meets with ever-recurring surprises at the wide dissemination of a language that is now considered particularly difficult. The utility of this knowledge is never mentioned by any writer: it was taken for granted. While the Greeks themselves rarely knew any tongue but their own, all foreigners possessed a speaking knowledge of Greek. Quintillian, who taught in Rome in the first century, urges his pupils to learn Greek at the same time with their mother-tongue. But he deplores the prevalent custom of teaching Roman children Greek before they know Latin. Yet there were virtually neither grammars nor dictionaries. The language was either picked up from those who spoke it or systematically taught by private tutors. Young men of literary tastes often supplemented the instruction gained at home by a brief sojourn in some Greek city. It should be remarked, however, that the Greeks had no need to acquire any other language for either literature or science, since all that was worth knowing was accessible in their native speech. Roman literature is so pervaded with Greek ideas that it is in no sense an original product. It contains hardly a thought that may not be found in Greek. It was in government alone that the Romans developed their own ideas and profited by their own experience. Although the Greek thinkers wrote a great deal upon the theory and practise of administration, the populace paid no heed and failed everywhere. It is a melancholy fact that they never learned wisdom from their constant succession of fiascoes repeated in every city throughout Greek lands.

There is no best method of teaching foreign languages: the method needs to be adapted to the pupil and to the purpose for which a language is learned. If the mind is to be trained at the same time in logical thinking, the procedure will necessarily be different and the results much slower than when the memory of the learner is to be filled with words and phrases to express concepts which are already in existence. Children learn languages because they can not help it; adults, because they want to. There is besides the much larger number who have to be taught for the reason that they are only half in earnest. It is this class of so-called students who furnish one of the serious problems for teachers. If one wants to teach an adult foreigner the English language there is no better method than that which bears the name of M. Gouin. The teacher suits the action to the word or phrase. He stands, he sits down, he gets up, he points to his eyes, his forehead, his hair, and so on, each time using the appropriate words. If he knows