Significance of the Study of Languages

32 and an exact knowledge of the value of constructions. It demands more than knowledge; it demands long and close application of that knowledge in reading, speaking, and writing. Such knowledge and such power in the use of language in the expression of our own throughts and in the interpretation of the thoughts of others we could no doubt acquire from the study of our own language

33 if we would only give the necessary time to it. I know of no school in which this is done. As a matter of fact such power seems more frequently to result from the study of foreign languages and the prolonged experience of translating, of remaking our own languages day after day for years to discover the words and the forms it offers to reproduce the thoughts embodied in the

34 words and constructions of a different language. If the foreign language in the language of a people emi nent in intellectual power and rich in expereiences of the life, the language will be rich not merely in words that name things, and actions and their attributes, but in words that express relations and in construction stand to one another or the attitude of the speaker towards the real or supposed

35 or assumed fact. And the richer the language form which he translates, the greater the demand on the translator to master the language into which he translates. Such work can hardly fail to give an intelligent student at least a knowledge of the resources of his own language and at keast an approach to skill in using them. I am sorry therefore that Greek, that speech so rich in all the respects here

36 referred to is no longer offered in our school; sorry that so few of our students find it possible to take either? of the foreign languages that we do offer; and sorry that there seems no chance for us to give in English? [?] to many the prolonged study necessary to master it. I am sorry, I say, because to leave school without coming to a sense of the dignity and beauty and