proved, as to render those exercises easy and familiar,
which, at a later period, would be found very difficult and irksome. Upon
this plan, and perhaps upon every other, some words will be learned before
the ideas represented by them are fully comprehended, or the things spoken
of are fully understood. But this seems necessarily to arise from the order
of nature in the development of the mental faculties; and an acquisition
cannot be lightly esteemed, which has signally augmented and improved that
faculty on which the pupil's future progress in knowledge depends.

18. The memory, indeed, should never be cultivated at the expense of the
understanding; as is the case, when the former is tasked with ill-devised
lessons by which the latter is misled and bewildered. But truth, whether
fully comprehended or not, has no perplexing inconsistencies. And it is
manifest that that which does not in some respect surpass the
understanding, can never enlighten it--can never awaken the spirit of
inquiry or satisfy research. How often have men of observation profited by
the remembrance of words which, at the time they heard them, they did not
"_perfectly understand!_" We never study any thing of which we imagine our
knowledge to be perfect. To learn, and, to understand, are, with respect to
any science or art, one and the same thing. With respect to difficult or
unintelligible phraseology alone, are they different. He who by study has
once stored his memory with the sound and appropriate language of any
important doctrine, can never, without some folly or conceit akin to
madness, repent of the acquisition. Milton, in his academy, professed to
teach things rather than words; and many others have made plausible
profession of the same thing since. But it does not appear, that even in
the hands of Milton, the attempt was crowned with any remarkable success.
See _Dr. Barrow's Essays_, p. 85.

19. The vain pretensions of several
modern simplifiers, contrivers of machines, charts, tables, diagrams,
vincula, pictures, dialogues, familiar lectures, ocular analyses, tabular
compendiums, inductive exercises, productive systems, intellectual methods,
and various new theories, for the purpose of teaching grammar, may serve to
deceive the ignorant, to amuse the visionary, and to excite the admiration
of the credulous; but none of these things has any favourable relation to
that improvement which may justly be boasted as having taken place within
the