As the Christian system of faith has made a revolution in theology, so also
bas 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.
