Inhaltsangabe
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1845 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XX. Knowledge of Languages. Magliabrcchi; Hill; Wild; Aram; Purver; Pendrell. If mechanical invention does not necessarily imply much study of books, and may seem, on that account, a province of intellectual exertion fitted for persons who have not enjoyed the advantages of a regular education, as being one in which natural sagacity. and ingenuity, as much as literary attainments, are requisite to ensure advancement, the same thing can hardly be said of another department, in which self-taught genius has frequently made extraordinary progress; we mean the study of languages. This is the sort of knowledge, indeed, which, in common parlance, is more peculiarly called learning. Its acquisition, in the circumstances alluded to, can only be the result of a love for, and familiarity with, books, and of what we may call the literary habit thoroughly formed. There are three purposes for which languages may be studied, independently of their gratifying that general desire of information which makes both the acquirement and the possession of all knowledge delightful. One use, and an infinitely important one, to be made of the knowledge of languages, is the study of that intellectual mechanism by which they have been formed, and of which they present us, as it were, with the impress or picture. Another department of philosophy to which this knowledge is a key, is that relating to the early history of our race, and the origin of the ditterent nations by whom the earth is peopled--a subject to many parts of which we have no other guide than the evidence of language, but upon which this evidence, skilfully interpreted, may. be made to throw the surest of all light. But the motive which most generally induces the student to seek an acquaintance with foreign or anc...
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