After they come out the difference of life and work is still greater. In the old days, for instance, they picked up the language quickly and well. The time to learn a language is when you are young--the younger the better. We learn our own language as children. The older we grow the harder it is, because it means not merely learning by heart a great many words, not merely training the palate and tongue to produce different sounds, but adopting a new attitude of mind. Nothing definite has been discovered as to the localisation of faculties in the brain, therefore nothing certain is known; but it has always seemed to me and to others whom I have consulted that when you learn a new language you are exercising and developing a new piece of brain. When you know several languages and change from one to another you seem definitely to change the piece of brain which actuates your tongue. You switch off one centre and switch on to another. You will always notice in yourself and others that there is a definite pause when the change of language is made. Now it becomes every year more difficult to awaken an unused part of the brain and bring it into active use, and to begin at twenty-three is late. True, languages are taught them at Oxford before they come out, but the result seems _nil_. You must learn a language where it is spoken. Moreover, the way they have been taught Latin and Greek is a hindrance, for living languages are not learnt that way. A child, for instance, learns to talk perfectly without ever learning grammar. I never heard that any great English writer had a grounding in English grammar. There is no real grammar of a living language, because it grows and changes. You can only have a fixed grammar of a dead language. The fact is that correct talking is the outcome of correct thinking, not of any mechanical rules. You must think in a language before you can speak it well. But at twenty-three it is far too late for the ordinary man to learn to think in Hindustani or Burmese or Tamil. Of course there are occasional exceptions, but the way these languages are usually spoken is dreadful. I could tell tales about myself as well as others, for though I worked very hard for years I never knew Burmese well, nor yet Canarese, nor yet Hindustani. Yet who will doubt that it is very important, the most important acquisition, in fact, that you can make? Without it you can never really get near the people. So that in this way the old civilian had again a great advantage.