CHAPTER XI.
LANGUAGE.
_Means for conveying instruction--Method of teaching the alphabet in connection with objects--Spelling--Reading--Developing lessons--Reading lessons in Natural History--The Arithmeticon--Brass letters--Their uses_.
* * * * * "Without things, words, accumulated by misery in the memory, had far better die than drag out a miserable existence in the dark.

Without words, theirs stay and support, things unaccountably disappear out of the storehouse, and may be lost for ever; but bind _a thing with a word_, a strong link, stronger than any steel, and softer than any silk, and the captive remains for ever happy in its bright prison-house."-- _Wilson_.
* * * * * The senses of children having revealed every object in its true light, they next desire to know its name, and then express their perceptions in words.

This you have to gratify, and from the time you tell them the name of an object, it is the representative of the thing in the mind of the child; if the object be not present, but you mention the name, this suggests it to the infant mind.

Had this been more frequently thought of by instructors, we should have found them less eager to make the child acquainted with the names of things of which it has no knowledge or perception.

Sounds and signs which give rise to no idea in the mind, because the child has never seen or known the things represented, are of no use, and can only burden the memory.
It is, therefore, the object of our system to give the children a knowledge of things, and then a knowledge of the words which represent those things.