memory of the present generation. The definitions and rules which
constitute the doctrines of grammar, may be variously expressed, arranged,
illustrated, and applied; and in the expression, arrangement, illustration,
and application of them, there may be room for some amendment; but no
contrivance can ever relieve the pupil from the necessity of committing
them thoroughly to memory. The experience of all antiquity is added to our
own, in confirmation of this; and the judicious teacher, though he will not
shut his eyes to a real improvement, will be cautious of renouncing the
practical lessons of hoary experience, for the futile notions of a vain
projector.

20. Some have been beguiled with the idea, that great proficiency in
grammar was to be made by means of a certain fanciful method of
_induction._ But if the scheme does not communicate to those who are
instructed by it, a better knowledge of grammar than the contrivers
themselves seem to have possessed, it will be found of little use.[59] By
the happy method of Bacon, to lead philosophy into the common walks of
life, into the ordinary business and language of men, is to improve the
condition of humanity; but, in teaching grammar, to desert the plain
didactic method of definition and example, rule and praxis, and pretend to
lead children by philosophic induction into a knowledge of words, is to
throw down the ladder of learning, that boys may imagine themselves to
ascend it, while they are merely stilting over the low level upon which its
fragments are cast.

21. The chief argument of these inductive grammarians is founded on the
principle, that children cannot be instructed by means of any words which
they do not perfectly understand. If this principle were strictly true,
children could never be instructed by words at all. For no child ever fully
understands a word the first time he hears or sees it; and it is rather by
frequent repetition and use, than by any other process, that the meaning of
words is commonly learned. Hence most people make use of many terms which
they cannot very accurately explain, just as they do of many _things_, the
real nature of which they do not comprehend. The first perception we have
of any word, or other thing, when presented to the ear or the eye, gives us
some knowledge of it. So, to the signs of thought, as older persons use
them, we soon attach some notion of what is meant; and the difference
between this knowledge, and that which