Alas! it all depended on a very small error. I had simply mistaken the organ. The organ of language … is not the eye; it is the ear. … The word was in my eye and not in my ear. the fact expressed by it had not penetrated to, was not graven upon, my intellectual substance, had never been received by my faculty of representation. … I had wearied my arms to strengthen my legs. [80]

In the school of Nature the child does not spell; never does it spel isolated words. It knows, understands, enounces nothing but complete sentences.

The child, going from act to act, articulated either aloud or softly to himself the expression of this act; and this expression was necessarily the verb. This was the last revelation (or the last but one), and perhaps the most important.

How shall I trace waht this revelation was to me? The verb! Why, it was the soul of the sentence. …

The verb appeared to us as the pivot axis of the linguistic method parcitesed by Nature. This sole insight contained in the germ a whole revelation in the art of teaching lagnuages. [83]