Their songs were inexhaustible. An instance is on record
where an Indian sang two hundred on various subjects.[18-1] Such a fact
reminds us of a beautiful expression of the elder Humboldt: "Man," he
says, "regarded as an animal, belongs to one of the singing species; but
his notes are always associated with ideas." The youth who were educated
at the public schools of ancient Mexico--for that realm, so far from
neglecting the cause of popular education, established houses for
gratuitous instruction, and to a certain extent made the attendance upon
them obligatory--learned by rote long orations, poems, and prayers with
a facility astonishing to the conquerors, and surpassing anything they
were accustomed to see in the universities of Old Spain. A phonetic
system actually weakens the retentive powers of the mind by offering a
more facile plan for preserving thought. "_Ce que je mets sur papier, je
remets de ma memoire_" is an expression of old Montaigne which he could
never have used had he employed ideographic characters.
Pages:
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47