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Trench, Richard C, 1807-1886

"On the Study of Words"

' Learn to distinguish between them, for you have the authority
of Hooker, that 'the mixture of those things by speech, which by nature
are divided, is the mother of all error.' [Footnote: See on all this
matter in Locke's _Essay on Human Understanding,_ chapters 9, 10 and 11
of the 3rd book, certainly the most remarkable in the _Essay;_ they bear
the following titles: _Of the Imperfection of Words, Of the Abuse of
Words, Of the Remedies of the Imperfection and Abuse of Words._] And
although I cannot promise you that the study of synonyms, or the
acquaintance with derivations, or any other knowledge but the very highest
knowledge of all, will deliver you from the temptation to misuse this or
any other gift of God--a temptation always lying so near us--yet I am sure
that these studies rightly pursued will do much in leading us to stand in
awe of this gift of speech, and to tremble at the thought of turning it to
any other than those worthy ends for which God has endowed us with a
faculty so divine.


LECTURE VII.
THE SCHOOLMASTER'S USE OF WORDS.

At the Great Exhibition of 1851, there might be seen a collection,
probably by far the completest which had ever been got together, of
what were called _the material helps of education_. There was then
gathered in a single room all the outward machinery of moral and
intellectual training; all by which order might be best maintained, the
labour of the teacher and the taught economized, with a thousand
ingenious devices suggested by the best experience of many minds, and
of these during many years.


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