THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE
(From Madame De Stael's Conversations.)
Madame De Stael's name ranks high in the history of French letters, and her clever writings are worth consideration in any age by any people. She says in speaking of the tendency of the times to make mathematics the basis of an education, that language, rather, should be the foundation and consequently the determining principle of character. In the reforms that followed the French Revolution Madame De Stael was a potent factor and her clear brain conceived ideas far in advance of the times, indeed no more logical reasoning has been deduced by any of our modern educators than by that brilliant French woman in her efforts to modify the extravagant stress placed on mathematics. She says that in early life this study only exercises the mechanism of the intellect, develops only a single faculty at a time when it is necessary to train the whole moral being and when the mind can as readily be deranged as the body. The child loses the vigor of imagination so fertile in youth and does not acquire in its stead a transcendent exactness.
Nothing is less applicable to life than mathematical reasoning. A proposition in figures is decidedly false or true, while in the problems of life the false is mixed with the true in such a way that often intuition alone can decide between them. In the study of mathematics one becomes accustomed to certainty and is irritated by opinions opposed to ones own, while in the conduct of life it is necessary to learn from others to understand what others think and feel. Mathematics induces the mind to hold only to that which is proved, while the primitive truths, those which instinct recognizes, are not susceptible of demonstration. Finally mathematics inspires too much respect for force, and that sublime energy, that counts obstacles as nothing and is delighted with sacrifice, hardly accords with the mind developed by algebraic combinations. A sentence in a strange language presents at the same time a grammatical and intellectual problem. At first the mind grasps only the word, then the sense of the phrase, and finally rises to the charm of the expression, the force, the harmony, all that is found of beauty and grandeur in the language of man. The number of faculties employed at the same time gives the study of language the advantage over all others. The mind in the study of two languages at a time encounters difficulties, compares and combines different kinds of analogies and resemblances and an active spontaneity of mind is excited which develops truly the faculty of thought. The memory is also happily employed in retaining a kind of knowledge, without which life is bounded by the circle of one's own nation, a circle as narrow as it is exclusive.
Language binds ideas together as calculation enchains figures. Grammatical logic is as exact as that of algebra and is applied to all that is animate in the mind. Words are at the same time figures and images, bond and free, submitting to the discipline of syntax and all powerful by their natural signification. There is found in the metaphysics of grammar, exactitude of reasoning and independence of thought united. All is lost in the words and all is found there again when one knows how to study them.
The languages are as indispensable to the child as to the man, since the problem being always proportionate to the intellect, each can draw from it such as he requires.
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