The application of this principle of individuation in the early stages of a child's learning to read, suggests the propriety also of making some preparation for his reading every new lesson in succession. We have seen that it is chiefly the new words in a lesson that create difficulty, and prevent the operation of that important law in Nature which induces the mind at once to lay hold of the ideas. To obviate this distraction of mind therefore beforehand, the new words which _are to occur_ in the lesson should be selected, and made familiar to the child previously, and by themselves;--he should be taught to read them easily by the combination of their letters, and clearly to understand their meaning, in precisely the same shade in which they are used in the lesson he is to read. When this is done, the lesson will be read with ease and with profit;--while, without this, the difficulty will be much greater, if not beyond his powers. In accordance with this plan, the "First Class Book," before referred to, has been constructed, and its efficiency on that account is greatly increased. The neglect of this special application of the principle has been long and painfully felt in society, and most of all where the young have been sent earliest to school. The habit of reading the words without understanding the meaning of what they read, having once been acquired, the weak powers of children are not sufficient to overcome the difficulties with which this habit has surrounded them. They feel themselves burdened and harassed with unnatural and unmeaning exercises for years, before they can acquire the art of reading the words of the simplest school book; and, what is still worse, after they have left the school, and have entered upon the busy scenes of life, they find, that they have now to teach themselves an entirely new art,--the art of _understanding by reading_. Instead of all this waste of energy, and patience, and time, experience has fully proved, that by following the plain and easy dictates of Nature, as above explained, all the drudgery of learning to read may be got over in a week,--it has been times without number accomplished in a single day,[16]--and this without any harassing exertion, and generally with delight. Of the truth of this, a few out of many instances may here be enumerated.