Excerpt from Greek Primer: Colloquial and Constructive
In particular, the so-called learned languages, two hundred years ago the only medium of culture to an accomplished English gentleman, have now become the luxury of the leisurely, or the arsenal of the professional few, while other languages, such as German, not named in those days, are now sought after as the keys to the most valuable storehouses of all sorts of knowledge. Add to this that Great Britain, which was then a secondary naval power, and following the French and the Spaniards slowly in the great world-transforming process of colonisation, is now mistress of a world-wide empire from the Ganges to Vancouver Isle, through which stretch she exercises a dominant influence, combining the political virtue of ancient Rome with the commercial activity of Carthage. In these circumstances it becomes the special duty of every British man to acquire a familiar knowledge of the languages of the various races with which he may be brought into political or commercial relations; and, as languages after all are not valuable in themselves, but only as tools by which effective work in certain fields falls to be performed, we ought to see to it, both that we get the proper tools for doing the work, and that we learn to use them in such fashion as to work pleasantly and profitably; and in this view it may be truly said that, while the wrong language in the wrong place is of no use at all, even the right language in the right place, when imperfectly learned, is a tool with which the best workman can do only bad work, and perhaps cut his own fingers in the process.
As language is a function which belongs as much to every normal human creature as seeing or hearing, there can be no difficulty in finding out the method of Nature in its acquisition.
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