Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/301

 two instances only, but in five or six; if this were done, a mind so trained would in fact have gone over the wide field of human nature, as to its recondite elements.

In the preceding chapter I directed the reader's attention to the two distinct but combined purposes, of conferring on the learnerfirst, a knowledge and command of language, and then, a knowledge, intimate and precise, of the phenomena of the material world, by the means of language, which, in fact, is a record of those appearances. And now, if we wish to pass inward, toward the world of mind, and open to the learner the abyss of the human bosom, or if we would make a preparation, ample and exact, for the study of mental philosophy, what course can be taken so natural, so simple, so easy, so efficacious and comprehensive, as that of bringing the entire compass of analogical terms which constitute the RECORD of mental phenomena, under an orderly review! And we attempt this, not on the ground of some questionable theory of intellectual science; but by merely taking up and examiningone by one, and in their natural relationships, all those primitives, whence the human mind has actually drawn the means for expressing the wide variety of its abstract notions, and of its feelings. This, I am humbly of opinion, is the best initiation in metaphysics; or in what is better than metaphysicsa genuine knowledge of the workings of the human mind: and I am sure that the process is of a kind that may be made inviting to all who are really susceptible of intellectual culture.

Along with exercises such as the above, and in the course of the analogies which we trace, connecting the primary with the intellectual sense of words, it will be well to mix such as consist in the analysis of those terms, of this same class, which have long since dropped their primitive significance, and which now suggest no idea but