sentence, to consider the leading facts first and then to descend to the
details. To begin with the parts of speech is to begin with details and to
disregard the higher unities, without which the details are scarcely
intelligible. The part of speech to which a word belongs is determined only
by its function in the sentence, and inflections simply mark the offices
and relations of words. Unless the pupil has been systematically trained to
discover the functions and relations of words as elements of an organic
whole, his knowledge of the parts of speech is of little value. It is not
because he cannot conjugate the verb or decline the pronoun that he falls
into such errors as "How many sounds _have_ each of the vowels?" "Five
years' interest _are_ due." "She is older than _me_." He probably would not
say "each _have_," "interest _are_," "_me_ am." One thoroughly familiar
with the structure of the sentence will find little trouble in using
correctly the few inflectional forms in English.

+The Study of the Sentence for the Laws of Discourse.+--Through the study
of the sentence we not only arrive at an intelligent knowledge of the parts
of speech and a correct use of grammatical forms, but we discover the laws
of discourse in general. In the sentence the student should find the law of
unity, of continuity, of proportion, of order. All good writing consists of
good sentences properly joined. Since the sentence is the foundation or
unit of discourse, it is all-important that the pupil should know the
sentence. He should be able to put the principal and the subordinate parts
in their proper relation; he should know the exact function of every
element, its relation to other elements and its relation to the whole. He
should know the sentence as the skillful engineer knows his engine, that,
when there is a disorganization of parts, he may at once find the
difficulty and the remedy for it.

+The Study of the Sentence for the Sake of Translation.+--The laws of