Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 79.djvu/379 LANGUAGE STUDY
AND LANGUAGE PSYCHOLOGY 375 Scotch Sabbath. And what becomes of
solving the language puzzle if we study English? Puzzles enough
and to spare in Shakespeare, yes. But the puzzles appear in
spots as compared with the somewhat con- tinuous bepuzzlement of
the classics, and their solution involves, in the main, only
some bit of glossarial definition ; it does not often demand a
complete rearrangement of the thought. Herein lies a cardinal
distinction. As we read or study our own tongue we enjoy
immediately something like a three-quarter apprehen- sion of it,
because it is English and because it is ours ; and being what we
are it is irksome to apply ourselves to getting a full
comprehension. The truly educative thing in language study is, I
take it, the effort to convert loose apprehension into thorough
comprehension, and the greater the immediate apprehension, the
less the effort and the less the stimulus to pass on to full
comprehension. This point h