Some have been beguiled with the idea, that great proficiency in grammar was to be made by means of a certain fanciful method of _induction._ But if the scheme does not communicate to those who are instructed by it, a better knowledge of grammar than the contrivers themselves seem to have possessed, it will be found of little use.[59] By the happy method of Bacon, to lead philosophy into the common walks of life, into the ordinary business and language of men, is to improve the condition of humanity; but, in teaching grammar, to desert the plain didactic method of definition and example, rule and praxis, and pretend to lead children by philosophic induction into a knowledge of words, is to throw down the ladder of learning, that boys may imagine themselves to ascend it, while they are merely stilting over the low level upon which its fragments are cast.
21.

The chief argument of these inductive grammarians is founded on the principle, that children cannot be instructed by means of any words which they do not perfectly understand.

If this principle were strictly true, children could never be instructed by words at all.

For no child ever fully understands a word the first time he hears or sees it; and it is rather by frequent repetition and use, than by any other process, that the meaning of words is commonly learned.

Hence most people make use of many terms which they cannot very accurately explain, just as they do of many _things_, the real nature of which they do not comprehend.