Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/297

 important object completely, there is needed, what has not as yet, so far as I know, been attempted; I mean a comprehensive classification of languagesay our own, on a rationally logical principle. The labour of so reducing an entire vocabulary to orders, genera, and species, and in a manner fully subserving the several purposes that should he kept in view would not be light:although the task is by no means a desperate one. Meantime an intelligent teacher may very easily, for himself, and his pupils, make some experiments in this way, the result of which will amply reward the pains and time bestowed upon them.

In the last chapter some examples were offered of the way in which the learner might be exercised in collecting descriptive words and phrases, and in putting them in ap- position; and on another occasion I shall have to insist upon the advantages that may be derived from a similar treatment of the abstract terms of the language. At present, some samples are offered of the way in which the tropical and ANALOGICAL terms of the language may be gathered into clusters, and exhibited in their natural relationship. These exercises, set a-going by the teacher, are easily continued, enlarged, and repeated, by the learner.

The habit we wish to form is that which enables the mind to grasp the compass of language, in its different bearings; or to take it up, over and over again, on different sides: as first, in its simplest form, and as the representative of the vast variety of our perceptions of the external world; and in the next place, as the same words, or a large portion of them, have been transfused, and rendered available for expressing intellectual, moral, and abstruse notions, by the aid of real or imagined analogies. Now the subjoined examples are to be considered as nothing more than random instances, upon which the teacher may easily improve; and which serve merely to exhibit the principle