Grammar.

Grammar may be considered under two aspects,—as a course of logical training, and as a means of knowing the laws of language.

Under the first aspect in which it is viewed apart from its application to the right use of language, Grammar has its chief end in mental regimen. Properly taught, Grammar should form the school course of Logic, towards which it can be made a most efficient instrument, quite within the grasp of children, in which they may be made to take positive pleasure. It should be made a means of training and exercising them more or less in abstract thought, in correct reasoning, in clear and ready discrimination of differentia, in classification, and definition, in the discovery of fallacy, and indeed in all the chief processes of the science of Logic—a logical course which will be all that most of our children will ever know of Logic and scientific method.

Its success will therefore depend on the correctness and logical accuracy of the definitions, classifications, and reasoning processes of our grammatical course both as to the general principles of grammar and their application to English.