The first book put into their hands is a grammar, the most abstract, the most fatiguing, the most unintelligible book that can be imagined, while, at the same time, it is the most useless at the beginning of the study, when the pupil has not yet gained a knowledge of the facts on which it rests. Contrary to reason, the grammar treats of words that occupy the attention before the ideas they represent. It is but a collection of rules and definitions, more or less obscure, incomprehensible, and inapplicable, as preparatory study.
If, as reason teaches, the art of reading is the first object of this study, grammar is not the least help in securing this end: it does not give the meaning of phrases and words, the only difficulty in beginning to read a foreign language. The thought of the author, in other words, the translation that interprets it, not the grammatical condition of the words, should be the first object of consideration with the beginner. He might know the grammar from beginning to end without understanding a word of the language. It certainly is not the art of reading, and cannot be the introduction to the study of language. The method that gives priority to the arts of speaking and writing has recourse to grammar at first; for, in default of example, rules are the only guides of study. But in reading, as in listening, the phrase presents itself, as a whole, to the mind; rules which coordinate the composition have no force until its parts are understood. It is, in fact, by language that we comprehend the grammar, not by grammar that we comprehend language.
Admitting that grammar teaches to speak and write correctly, that is not teaching to speak and write, but only to do them correctly; in other words, to avoid or correct errors that might glide into expression and thought. It is, therefore, necessary to begin by speaking or by writing, to get any advantage from the rules of grammar.
In beginning with grammar, children do not see its utility, and are disgusted. They are neither interested nor profited, because they do not give it their attention. On the contrary, what interest grammar awakens, when, in place of presenting it dead, so to say, in an abstract manner, it is made to arise from the phraseology, rousing the curiosity, leading to the generalization of facts through observation and reflection, and so opening a vast field to the intellect!
Of all the means that tradition and routine have established in teaching language, grammar is, perhaps, the most prejudicial in retarding practical knowledge. By a deplorable violation of the laws of Nature, substituting synthesis for analysis, putting precept before example, theory before practice, grammar is made the base of language. The minds of children are loaded with principles and theories, roots of words and their etymologies, as if they were all to be philologists and teachers of languages.
Grammar indicates, only in a limited way, the received usage; there are many idiomatic expressions concerning which it is no help.
