Unity of language

Unity of language is impossible to the same degree as unity of government, at least until a remote epoch. Let us, then, leave to the children of our grandchildren the care of thinking about the linguistic transformations that their epochs will require. What matters today is to increase the means of relation, to suppress the obstacles that separate the nationalities, to consider men as beings who speak to God in a different language, which they have learned to respect and to venerate under diverse forms, but who are all His creatures to the same degree. Dispense instruction widely, make philosophy simple and lucid, free it from all the muddles of the scholastic cliques; let your discussions have for their object the principles, and not the forms of language, in order that you may arrive, if not at absolute truth, at least at coming nearer to it each day.

Study foreign languages, but know well, above all, that of your country; make use of them to study History, to appreciate the progress of the human spirit, and to create for yourselves a method of experimentation as to the manner in which they are realized. It is neither the variety nor the multitude of knowledge that makes a man truly instructed; the important thing is not to know much, but to know with certainty and with logic. The faults of past generations ought to be, for the contemporary generation, kinds of reefs, indicated as an object of study for the experimenters, so that they may avoid striking against them… The explorers of unknown seas expose themselves to serious risks, because they are ignorant of the cause and nature of the dangers they will have to face; if they do not discover all the reefs, at least they mark a greater number of them for those who must travel the same routes after them, and each keeps himself in safety. In the infinite ocean that we must traverse to attain perfection, it would seem, on the contrary, that the rocks attract, that the treacherous currents are endowed with an attractive power, with an irresistible magnetic influence. Each one wishes to run aground on his own, caring nothing for those who perished upon discovering the abyss! When, then, will you be prudent, O men!… When will you abandon your mad and rash excursions without method and without restraint?… When will you make of reason and logic your surest guides?

But, if you wish to smooth the road and obtain this result, forget your internal dissensions; let particular interest disappear before the general interest, and let your common motto be: Each for all and all for each.

Do you want peace? Give instruction!…

Do you want the progress of commerce, of the arts, of industry? Propagate instruction!…

Instruction everywhere and always!… it is by it and by it alone that the shadows will disappear; it is it that will make of intelligence a force and of matter an object; of God the creative and remunerating power; of man a regenerated and progressive intelligence; of all, in short, the cooperating members of one and the same family: Humanity.

Channing. n [1]

[v. William Ellery Channing.]