Excerpt from The Organic Method of Studying Languages, Vol. 1: I. French, Containing a Complete Accidence and Elementary Syntax Combined

This method is based on the axiom that the theoretical study of a science can only be carried on satisfactorily if the student possesses a sufficient amount of knowledge gained by experience, and conversely, that knowledge gained by experience, in order to be complete and thorough, must be supplemented by a systematic analysis of the law's which underlie that science.

Taking this general principle for my starting-point, and applying it to the study of languages in particular, I have attempted to initiate the beginner into the study of languages (in the first instance the French language), by a method in which practice and theory are so intimately blended, as continually to react upon and supplement each other.

With this view I begin with whole sentences, instead of isolated words, and taking the Verb for the warp of the texture, I gradually interweave the woof in the shape of Nouns, Pronouns, Adjectives, and other parts of speech, until finally the complete fabric emerges from the loom. Reserving any further ornamental embroidery for a more advanced stage, I have confined my task to the framing of a plain, homespun, wear-and-tear-proof fabric, of which not a single thread need subsequently be undone.

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