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Untitled Article
conviction . I shall be rejoiced , if any one will take the trbuble td correct my errors . My life hitherto has been one of more action than study . Some of tho&fe persons who consider * meat , clothes , and fire /' to be the end df human existence , Will perhaps ask , wh&i All this has to do with human happiness . I will not endeavour to answer those whom it is hopeless to expect to convince , for , like the caliph Omar * they would be burners of libraries , but I speak to those who recognise in all knowledge a constant tendency to make human beings show likfest gods . ' I call on all those who love glorious learning for its own sake , and not for its value in the
market , to aid in promoting those arrangements , which may give to learning the same impulse , the same facilities , that have been given to the production of physical enjoyments . On the latter , the joint aid of large capital and extensive cooperation has been brought to bear , but learning has been left to struggle on , frequently in want , and mostly in a state of isolation . The knowledge of what has gone by , is most useful for the purposes of
comparison . Experience makes fools wise . We still need to trace back the track by which human beings have gained their present elevation . We have still to learn their actual progress , and it is only by becoming acquainted with the history of all languages , that we cian get at facts , stripped of prejudice . It is time that the work were commenced upon a systematic method . It is time to remove the disgrace from " merry England , " that ,
with all her immense resources , she has yet done less public service to the advancement of human knowledge than an obscure German court . Existing means are in abundance misapplied , and devoted to unworthy purposes ; but even if they did not exist , they should be produced by the sacrifice of less useful things . The property which is -wasted in one year by the corporations of a single city , in feasting only , might serve for the
endowment of a college of universal language , in which the professors of all languages might meet together , and work in concert , beginning at the beginning . No single man can acquire a knowledge of all languages , and even if he could , the very fact would possibly be a proof of a deficiency of reasoning powers . Many of the greatest linguists have been little more than ii species of interpreters . The fair-haired and blue-eyed natives of Hamburgh have this quality in perfection . They are constantly met
with , speaking and writing with fluency six or seven langitagues ; and they are the best possible material out of which merchants' corresponding clerks are fbrrned ; but I have never remarked in them the higher qualities of acutenessand judgment . But professors , who study a single language , usually apply themselves to it from liking , and are acquainted with all the minutiae . They work con amore . In addition to one or two professors of each language , there should be several men of sound judgment in the quality of supervisors
Untitled Article
890 Prtp&id fa- d Ntttibriul Cbtitge of Language .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1833, page 390, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2616/page/30/
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