being visible?
A less power of vision would have been sufficient for man, if the
immensity he now possesses were given only to waste itself, as it were,
on an immense desert of space glittering with shows.

It is only by contemplating what he calls the starry heavens, as the
book and school of science, that he discovers any use in their being
visible to him, or any advantage resulting from his immensity of
vision. But when he contemplates the subject in this light, he sees an
additional motive for saying, that nothing was made in vain; for in vain
would be this power of vision if it taught man nothing.

CHAPTER XII - THE EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANISM ON EDUCATION; PROPOSED
REFORMS.

As the Christian system of faith has made a revolution in theology, so
also has it made a revolution in the state of learning. That which is
now called learning, was not learning originally. Learning does not
consist, as the schools now make it consist, in the knowledge of
languages, but in the knowledge of things to which language gives names.

The Greeks were a learned people, but learning with them did not consist
in speaking Greek, any more than in a Roman's speaking Latin, or a
Frenchman's speaking French, or an Englishman's speaking English. From
what we know of the Greeks, it does not appear that they knew or studied
any language but their own, and this was one cause of their becoming
so learned; it afforded them more time to apply themselves to better
studies. The schools of the Greeks were schools of science and
philosophy, and not of languages; and it is in the knowledge of the
things that science and philosophy teach that learning consists.

Almost all the scientific learning that now exists, came to us from the
Greeks, or the people who spoke the Greek language. It therefore
became necessary to the people of other nations, who spoke a different
language, that some among them should learn the Greek language, in order
that the learning the Greeks had might be made known in those nations,
by translating the Greek books of science and philosophy into the mother
tongue of each nation.

The study, therefore, of the Greek language (and in the same manner for
the Latin) was no other than the drudgery business of a linguist; and
the language thus obtained, was no other than the means, or as it were
the tools, employed to obtain the learning the Greeks had. It made no
part of the learning itself; and was so distinct from it as to make