William Stevens Balch

“ I stand here, you set there, and the third person is in Philadelphia. I utter these words, "Let him love." What is my meaning? Why, our books tell us, that the verb to love is third person. Then I command him to let himself love! What jargon and falsehood! You all know that we can address the second person only. You would call me insane if I should employ language according to the rules of grammar as laid down in the standard books. In my room alone, no person near me, I cry out, "let me be quiet"—imperative mood, first person of to be! Do I command myself to let myself be quiet? ”

“ The propriety of such a use of words I will not stop to question, but simply remark that such figures should never be employed in the instruction of children. As the mind expands, no longer content to grovel amidst mundane things, we mount the pegasus of imagination and soar thro the blissful or terrific scenes of fancy and fiction, and study a language before unknown. But it would be an unrighteous demand upon others, to require them to understand us; and quite as unpardonable to brand them with ignorance because they do not.
Most nouns are in the third person. ”

“ I can not believe there is a person in this respected audience whose mind is in such voluntary slavery as to induce the adoption of such a course. I see before me minds which sparkle in every look, and thoughts which are ever active, to acquire what is true, and adopt what is useful. And I flatter myself that the time spent in the investigation of the science of language will not be unpleasant or unprofitable. ”

“ As soon as they leave school it is all forgotten; and you will hear them say, at the very time they should be reaping the harvest of former toil, that they once understood grammar, but it is all gone from them. Poor souls! their memory is very treacherous, else they have never learned language as they ought. There is a fault somewhere. To us it is not difficult to determine where it is.
That certain words are prepositions, there can be no doubt, because the books say they are; but why they are so, is quite another matter. All we desire is to have their meaning understood. ”

“ But we should know that the same sublime principle is constantly operating thro out universal nature. Let that be suspended, cease its active operations for a moment, and our own earth will be decomposed into particles; the sun, moon and stars will dissolve and mingle with the common dust; all creation will crumble into atoms, and one vast ocean of darkness and chaos will fill the immensity of space.
Are you then prepared to deny the principles for which we are contending? ”

“ I trust I have now said enough on the general principles of language as applied to things. In the next lecture I will come down to a sort of bird's eye view of grammar. But my soul abhors arbitrary rules so devoutly, I can make no promises how long I will continue in close communion with set forms of speech. I love to wander too well to remain confined to one spot, narrowed up in the limits fixed by others. Freedom is the empire of the mind ”

“ In an open area of sufficient dimensions is congregated a delegation from every language under heaven. All are so arranged as to face a common center. A white horse is led into that spot and all look at the living animal which stands before them. The same impression must be made on all minds so far as a single animal is concerned. But as the whole is made up of parts, so their minds will soon diverge from a single idea, and one will think of his size, compared with other horses; another of his form; another of his color. ”

“ In writing and conversation we should employ words to explain, to define and describe, which are better understood than those things of which we speak. The pedantry of some modern writers in this respect is ridiculous. Not satisfied to use plain terms which every body can understand, they hunt the dictionaries from alpha to omega, and not unfrequently overleap the "king's english," and ransack other languages to find an unheard of word, or a list of adjectives never before arranged together, in so nice a manner, so that their ideas are lost to the common reader, if not to themselves. ”

“ Heaven has hung before all human eyes an impenetrable veil which obscures all future events. No man without prophetic vision bestowed by Him who "sees the end from the beginning," can know what is to be, and no expression can be made, no words employed which will positively declare a future action. ”

“ 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 child first sees material objects. It is taught to name them. It next learns the qualities of things; as the sweetness of sugar, the darkness of night, the beauty of flowers. From this it ascends by gradation to the higher attainments of knowledge as revealed in the empire of mind, as well as matter. Great care should be taken that this advancement be easy, natural, and thoro. It should be constantly impressed with the importance of obtaining clear and definite ideas of things, and never employ words till it has ideas to express; never name a thing of which it has no knowledge. ”

“ In fact, they can, in this way, never learn to reason well or employ language correctly; no more than a painter can be successful in his art, by merely looking at the pictures of others without having ever seen the originals. A good artist is a close observer of nature. So children should be left free to examine and reflect, and the signs will then serve their proper use—the means of acquiring the knowledge of things. In vain you may give a scholar a knowledge of the Hebrew, Greek, or Latin, learn him to translate with rapidity or speak our own language fluently. ”

“ With red Nature heightens the brilliant parts of the most beautiful flowers. She has given a complete clothing of it to the rose, the queen of the garden: and bestowed this tint on the blood, the principle of life in animals: she invests most of the feathered race, in India, with a plumage of this color, especially in the season of love ”

“ If there is a subject which teaches us beyond controversy the existence of a Supreme Power, a Universal Father, an all-wise and ever-present God, it is found in the order and harmony of all things, produced by the regulation of Divine laws; and man's superiority to the rest of the world is most clearly proved, from the possession of a power to adapt language to the communication of ideas in free and social converse, or in the transmission of thought, drawn from an observation and knowledge of things as presented to his understanding. ”

“ In our times we are not fated to live under the terrors of the Inquisition; but prejudice, if not as strong in power to execute, has the ability to blind as truly as in other ages, and keep us from the knowledge and adoption of practical improvements. And it is the same philosophy now, which asks if inanimate matter can act, which demanded of Gallileo if this ponderous globe could fly a thousand miles in a minute, and no body feel the motion ”

“ And if there is any thing that will carry the mind of the child above the low and grovelling things of earth, and fill the soul with reverence and devotion to the Holy Being who fills immensity with his presence, it is when, from observing the laws which govern matter, he passes to observe the powers and capabilities of the mind, and thence ascends to the Intellectual Source of light, life, and being, and contemplates the perennial and ecstatic joys which flow from the presence of Deity ”

“ It is, in short, to exhibit before you truth of the greatest practical importance, not only to you, but to generations yet unborn, in the most essential affairs of human life, that I have broached the hated subject of grammar, and undertaken to reflect light upon this hitherto dark and disagreeable subject. ”

“ But if the book does not act, neither can the desk act, for that only repels the force of the book in pressing upon it in its tendency towards the earth, in obedience to the law of gravitation. And yet our authors have told us that the desk is active in resisting no action of the book! No wonder people are unable to understand grammar. It violates the first principles of natural science, and frames to itself a code of laws, unequal, false, and exceptionable, which bear no affinity to the rest of the world, and will not apply in the expression of ideas. ”

“ There is hardly a teacher of grammar, whose self-esteem is not enormous, who will not confess himself ignorant on many of the important principles of language; that he has never understood, and could never explain them. He finds no difficulty in repeating what the books say, but if called upon to express an opinion of his own, he has none to give. He has learned and used words without knowing their meaning.
Children should be taught language as they are taught music. They should learn the simple tones on which the whole science depends. ”

“ Gold possesses a power which charms nearly all men to sacrifice their ease, and too many their moral principles, to pay their blind devotions at its shrine.
Who will contend that the power of action is confined to the animal creation alone, and that inanimate matter can not act? That there is a superior power possessed by man, endowed with an immaterial spirit in a corporeal body, none will deny. By the agency of the mind he can accomplish wonders, which mere physical power without the aid of such mental skill, could never perform. ”

“ And yet so it is; people will remain wedded to their old systems, and refuse to open their eyes and behold the evidences every where around them. Teachers themselves, the guides of the young—and I blush to say it, for I was long among the number—have, with their scholars, labored all the morning, breaking roads, shovelling snow, and clearing paths, to get to the school-house, and then set down and taught them that to snow is an intransitive verb. What nonsense; nay, worse, what falsehoods have been instilled into the youthful mind in the name of grammar! ”

“ Mark the tall pine which has grown from a small seed which sent forth its root downwards and its trunk upwards, drawing nourishment from earth, air, and water, till it now waves its top to the passing breeze, a hundred feet above this dirty earth: or the oak or olive, which have maintained their respective positions a dozen centuries despite the operations of wind and weather, and have shed their foliage and their seeds to propagate their species and extend their kinds to different places. ”

“ As all actions presuppose an actor, so every action must result on some object. No effect can exist without an efficient cause to produce it; and no cause can exist without a corresponding effect resulting from it. These mutual relations, helps, and dependencies, are manifest in all creation. Philosophy, religion, the arts, and all science, serve only to develope these primary laws of nature, which unite and strengthen, combine and regulate, preserve and guide the whole. ”

“ Nay, he often submits to the controlling power of the vine, alcohol, or tobacco, which gain a secret influence over his nobler powers, and fix on him the stamp of disgrace, and throw around him fetters from which he finds it no easy matter to extricate himself. By the illusions of error and vice he is often betrayed, and long endures darkness and suffering, till he regains his native energies, and finds deliverance in the enjoyment of truth and virtue. ”

“ We must not endeavor to change the principles of language, but to understand and explain them; to ascertain, as far as possible, the actions of the mind in obtaining ideas, and the use of language in expressing them. We may not be able to make our sentiments understood; but if they are not, the fault will originate in no obscurity in the facts themselves, but in our inability either to understand them or the words employed in their expression. Having been in the habit of using words with either no meaning or a wrong one, it may be difficult to comprehend the subject of which they treat. ”

“ It has been the fault in teaching language, that learners have been limited to the mere forms of words, while the important duty of teaching them to look at the thing signified, has been entirely disregarded. Hence they have only obtained book knowledge. They know what the grammars say; but how to apply what they say, or what is in reality meant by it, they have yet to learn. This explains the reason why almost every man who has studied grammar will tell you that "he used to understand it, but it has all gone from him, for he has not looked into a book these many years." ”

“ It is not the saving of time, however, for which we propose a change in the system of teaching language. In this respect, it is the study of one's life. New facts are constantly developing themselves, new combinations of ideas and words are discovered, and new beauties presented at every advancing step. It is to acquire a knowledge of correct principles, to induce a habit of correct thinking, a freedom of investigation, and at that age when the character and language of life are forming. ”

“ There is no other process by which any knowledge can be gained of actions. The mind contemplates the acting thing in a condition of change and determines the precise action by the altered condition of the thing, and thus learns to judge of actions by their effects. The only method by which we can know whether a vegetable grows or not is by comparing its form to-day with what it was some days ago. We can not decide on the improvement of our children only by observing the same rule. ”