account it takes of the personality of the person who is to use it. Some text-books do not consider the student at all. The only concern of the author is to make the best possible presentation of his subject. Above everything he desires to give a logically arranged statement of the important facts in their true relation to each other. The subject is everything. Such books are veritable "texts." They almost demand a teacher: the matter is stated in such a bald way that the ordinary student has little chance of mastering the subject, while the somewhat easy-going student is supplied with no moral incentive to effort. The teacher can supply to the ordinary student explanations and expansions, and can apply stimulus to the indifferent one. The private student finds such books very difficult. Of course, if he has the intelligence and the grit to face and conquer them, he has a corresponding reward; for there is no triumph like that of mastering a difficult subject by sheer force of intelligent application.
Other text-books, particularly of recent years, do take account of the nature of the pupil. They recognize the distinction between presenting the matter from the point of view of the person who knows it all already and from the point of view of the person who is making his first acquaintance with the subject. The old Latin Grammars, for example began with the declensions and worked their way mercilessly through the whole of the Accident and Syntax without taking the least account of how it
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