gular intellectual value. Many of the faults and mistakes
of the ancient philosophers are traceable to the fact that they knew
no language but their own, and were often led into confusing the symbol
with the thought which it embodied. I think it is Locke [84] who says
that one-half of the mistakes of philosophers have arisen from questions
about words; and one of the safest ways of delivering yourself from the
bondage of words is, to know how ideas look in words to which you are
not accustomed. That is one reason for the study of language; another
reason is, that it opens new fields in art and in science. Another is
the practical value of such knowledge; and yet another is this, that
if your languages are properly chosen, from the time of learning the
additional languages you will know your own language better than ever
you did. So, I say, if the time given to education permits, add Latin
and German. Latin, because it is the key to nearly one-half of English
and to all the Romance languages; and German, because it is the key to
almost all the remainder of English, and helps you to understand a
race from whom most of us have sprung, and who have a character and
a literature of a fateful force in the history of the world, such as
probably has been allotted to those of no other people, except the Jews,
the Greeks, and ourselves. Beyond these, the essential and the eminently
desirable elements of all education, let each man take up his special
line--the historian devote himself to his history, the man of science
to his science, the man of letters to his culture of that kind, and the
artist to his special pursuit.

Bacon has prefaced some of his works with no more than this: Franciscus
Bacon sic cogitavit;[85] let "sic cogitavi" be the epilogue to what I
have ventured to address to you to-night.

THE METHOD OF SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION [86]

The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of
the necessary mode of working of the human mind. It is simply the mode
at which all phenomena are reasoned about, rendered precise and
exact. There is no more difference, but there is just the same kind of
difference, between the mental operations of a man of science and those
of an ordinary person, as there is between the operations and methods of
a baker or of a butcher weighing out his goods in common scales, and the
operations of a chemist in performing a difficult and complex analysis
by means of his