Sidor som bilder
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PREFACE.

Few things are more important in the early education of youth, than to teach them accurately the meaning of words, and few things are more difficult. If a common dictionary is taken for this purpose, and an attempt made to study the definitions which it contains, both teacher and pupil are appalled, at the very outset, with the almost hopeless task of learning in succession the meaning of some thirty or forty thousand words. But this is not necessary. The well known principle, Divide and conquer, applies here with peculiar force. Thousands of these words, by daily use in the family and in the common intercourse of life, are better understood by every intelligent child of eight or ten years of age, than they can be from any mere definition. For what can make plainer to such a child the meaning of the words, tree, horse, chair, table, run, give, take, see, hear, love, hate, and the like. This class of words is very large, and it is needless to occupy the time, and burden the memory of the pupil, with learning definitions of them.

In addition to this, thousands of the most difficult words, including the technical and scientific, had better be reserved till the mind is more developed and fitted to comprehend them, and till the comparatively easy words needed in defining them, are well understood. For, otherwise, from getting only a vague and imperfect notion of the meaning of such words, there will

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