principles or distant results.  So children must learn to observe things as they are, in their simplest manifestations, in order to understand the more secret and sublime operations of nature.  And our language should always be adapted to their capacities; that is, it should agree with their advancement.  You may talk to a zealot in politics of religion, the qualities of forbearance, candor, and veracity; to the enthusiast of science and philosophy; to the bigot of liberality and improvement; to the miser of benevolence and suffering; to the profligate of industry and frugality; to the misanthrope of philanthropy and patriotism; to the degraded sinner of virtue, truth, and heaven; but what do they know of your meaning?  How are they the wiser for your instruction?  You have touched a cord which does not vibrate thro their hearts, or, phrenologically, addressed an organ they do not possess, except in a very moderate degree, at least.  Food must be seasoned to the palates of those who use it.  Milk is for babes and strong meat for men.  Our instruction must be suited to the capacities of those we would benefit, always elevated just far enough above them to attract them along the upward course of improvement.

But it should be remembered that evils will only result from a deviation from truth, and that we can never be justified in doing wrong because others have, or for the sake of meeting them half way.  And yet this very course is adopted in teaching, and children are learned to adopt certain technical rules in grammar, not because they are true, but because they are convenient!  In fact, it is said by some, that language is an arbitrary affair altogether, and is only to be taught and learned mechanically!  But who would teach children that seven times seven are fifty, and nine times nine a hundred, and assign as a reason for so doing, that fifty and a hundred are more easily remembered than forty-nine and eighty-one?  Yet there would be as much propriety in adopting such a principle in mathematics, as in teaching for a rule of grammar that when an objective case comes after a verb, it is active; but when there is none expressed, it is intransitive or neuter.

The great fault is, grammarians do not allow themselves to think on the subject of language, or if they do, they only think intransitively, that is, produce no thoughts by their cogitations.

This brings us to a more direct consideration of the subject before us.  All admit the correctness of the axiom that every effect must have a cause, and that every cause will have an effect.  It is equally true that “like causes will produce like effects,” a rule from which nature itself, and thought, and language, can never deviate.  It is as plain as that two things mutually equal to each other, are equal to a third.  On this immutable principle we base our theory of the activity of all