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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