236 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
our sole means of intercourse with our fellow-men. Without it the laws 
of evolution would work backward, and by involution we should become 
anthropoids. Language fixes our modes of thought and sets limits to 
shought. Its domain stretches across indeterminable boundaries into 
she realms of logic, psychology, ethics, and religion. Its phenomena are 
fruitful of curious truths and stimulating speculations, and are most 
‘ntimately related to life. Therefore we shall not be content to know our 
scholar can use language well for practical purposes ; we shall make this 
instrument an object of his study until he knows something of its nature 
and history, until he feels wonder and love for the thing bv which, intel- 
lectually, he lives. 
At what points the writer thinks Latin and a modern language should 
be introduced into the work of the secondary school, will appear if he is 
permitted to outline a course of language study, whose operation he has 
had occasion to watch and admire. It was reached empirically, by con- 
tinued selection of methods yielding best results, but is believed to rest on 
sound pedagogical principles reinforced by important practical considera- 
tions. It is a six years’ course, of which the first two years precede the 
vork commonly recognized as belonging to the secondary school. : 
The work of these two years differs from the usual exercises in reading 
and spelling, in that there is a well-defined purpose and a continuous effort 
on the part of the teacher to make it a study in literature, and to awaken 
lively interest on the part of the class in the subject matter of what they 
ead. What he finds in books the average child grasps less perfectly than 
what he hears of or sees, because a considerable portion of his mental 
anergy is spent in the labor of recognizing words and gathering in sen- 
sences. He has not yet skill to place interpretive emphasis, pause, and 
accent as he passes over new ground, and his rate of reading is so much 
slower than his ability to take in the same matter by ear, that reading is 
ull business. All boys like to have books read to them ; few will read for 
themselves when they can find anything else to do. 
The all-important thing is to develop interest, and this is done by 
dwelling less than is usual with classes at the age of ten or twelve upon 
the language itself, in order to dwell more than is usual upon what it 
contains. The books read are from standard authors who have a style 
and subject comprehensible by the pupils. The movement of the class is 
rapid, skipping freely and securing much volunteer reading of omitted 
portions. But there is a great deal of discussion, mostly by the class, of 
the scenes depicted, characters presented, actions and events narrated ; 
of the writer, and the plot and ethics of the story. It is the importance 
attached to this talk, the systematic nature of it, the time allowed to it, 
in the effort to make things in books interesting and real to the juveniles, 
that entitles what they call lessons in reading and spelling to be desig- 
nated as work in literature.