GREEK AS INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE. 233 preferred to every other in the selection of a universal language for scholars. Sola virtus in stia potestate est ; omnia prcBter earn subjecta sunt fortunes dominationi. This sen- tence of a Latin poet can well be applied to the Greek language. As Virtue, and Virtue only, is her own master, not, as are all other things, subject to the influence of Fortune, so is Greek, and Greek only, of all European languages, her own master. If we take up a Greek dictionary written for Greeks, we notice that it contains no foreign words. The Greeks love their language as they love their religion. They are jealous to pre- serve its purity. The use of a foreign word in Greek conversation is as detestable to an edu- cated Greek as is swearing to a well-bred Ameri- can. English, French, Italian, Spanish cannot be learned satisfactorily without a knowledge of Greek and Latin ; and German, an original lan- guage, has become so much confused by admix- ture with foreign words that a knowledge of at least Greek and Latin is indispensable to its un- derstanding. The fact that Greek is the only living homo- geneous language is one of the many reasons why it should be chosen as the future interna-
