Consider a student of law who ordinarily is plunged into the intricacies of legal systems which have grown up through the struggles, the reforms and even the blunders of thousands of years. How clearly he could make his way if he saw how laws began in their simplest forms, framed to meet the needs of savage tribes.
If the student learns of the rudest means men have of conversing by gestures and cries, and then follows through the development of articulate speech as an improvement on the earlier and lower methods, this is a better start in the science of language or philology than could have been made by beginning with the apparently arbitrary rules and subtile perplexities of grammar.
The same arguments that we all use for going thoroughly into any subject to its very foundation apply equally here. History is the whole of human life, and we must know all we can about man if we make any attempt to understand his acts and grasp the full significance of his influence upon his race and age.
The University of Chicago.
