nk and work, of
countries which, from the point of view of science, stand in the
forefront of contemporary civilisation.

In our days the cultivation of the sciences is not confined to any
single country, or even to Europe. It is international. All problems,
the same problems, are being studied everywhere simultaneously. It is
difficult to-day, and to-morrow it will be impossible, to find a subject
which can be treated without taking cognisance of works in a foreign
language. Henceforth, for ancient history, Greek and Roman, a knowledge
of German will be as imperative as a knowledge of Greek and Latin.
Questions of strictly local history are the only ones still accessible
to those who do not possess the key to foreign literatures. The great
problems are beyond their reach, for the wretched and ridiculous reason
that works on these problems in any language but their own are sealed
books to them.

Total ignorance of the languages which have hitherto been the ordinary
vehicles of science (German, English, French, Italian) is a disease
which age renders incurable. It would not be exacting too much to
require every candidate for a scientific profession to be at least
_trilinguis_--that is, to be able to understand, fairly easily, two
languages besides his mother-tongue. This is a requirement to which
scholars were not subject formerly, when Latin was still the common
language of learned men, but which the conditions of modern scientific
work will henceforth cause to press with increasing weight upon the
scholars of every country.[*]

[*] Perhaps a day will come when it will be necessary to know the most
important Slavonic language; there are already scholars who are setting
themselves to learn Russian. The idea of restoring Latin to its old
position of universal language is chimerical. See the file of the
_Phoenix, seu nuntius latinus universalis_ (London, 1891, 4to).

The French scholars who are unable to read German and English are
thereby placed in a position of permanent inferiority as compared with
their better instructed colleagues in France and abroad; whatever their
merit, they are condemned to work with insufficient means of
information, to work badly. They know it. They do their best to hide
their infirmity, as something to be ashamed of, except when they make a
cynical parade of it and boast of it; but this boasting, as we can
easily see, is only shame showing itself in a different way. Too much
stress cannot