I found my efforts to communicate my enthusiasm all in vain. I was met by a look of pity in the eyes of my listeners, and soon came to know the source and meaning of the emotion. They were sorry that I should continue to admire that which was the symptom of a diseased condition, and they commiserated the retrograde state of so many millions of the inhabitants of the globe, who could spend some of the best moments and feelings of their lives on what was merely superficial. They sympathised with the effort to live in a world of thought, a spiritual world, a nobler existence than that of eating and drinking; this was a sign of a yearning for advance. But they grieved that it should take such a mistaken direction, that their fellow-men in the West should glory in what was an evidence of disease. Language was singularly disordered, when only a few could be found throughout the ages with the capacity to use it aptly and musically. Where was the wisdom that guided the people, if it could let this greatest instrument and medium of thought remain so chaotic and infirm that whosoever was skilled in fit and melodious use of it was held to be inspired? Surely it was the first care of the elders and governors to see that the universal means of communication was at least unambiguous and explicit. The highway of thought was left a jungle, primeval and inarticulate as the intercourse of animals; and one who made a clear track through any part of the labyrinth was lauded as divine. The literature of Europe was evidently but the outcome of the incapacity of its people for proper self-government. That only a few should be able to write or speak in so clear and fitting a way was a disgrace to the civilisation. To honour them so greatly as the people did revealed the depths of incapacity into which all had fallen, and the corrupt state of the language.