Thus all
disfigured as it is to-day in Greece, it can still be regarded as the
most beautiful language in the universe.
The most beautiful language cannot be the most widely distributed, when
the people which speaks it is oppressed, not numerous, without commerce
with other nations, and when these other nations have cultivated their
own languages. Thus Greek should be less diffused than Arabic, and even
Turkish.
Of all European languages French should be the most general, because it
is the most suited to conversation: it has taken its character from that
of the people which speaks it.
The French have been, for nearly a hundred and fifty years, the people
which has best known society, which the first discarded all
embarrassment, and the first among whom women were free and even
sovereign, when elsewhere they were only slaves. The always uniform
syntax of this language, which admits no inversions, is a further
facility barely possessed by other tongues; it is more current coin than
others, even though it lacks weight. The prodigious quantity of
agreeably frivolous books which this nation has produced is a further
reason for the favour which its language has obtained among all nations.
Profound books will not give vogue to a language: they will be
translated; people will learn Newton's philosophy; but they will not
learn English in order to understand it.
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