TO STUDENTS.

You will notice in chapter one that at the close of nearly every paragraph questions are thrown in.  They are inserted to help you cultivate in yourself the very valuable habit of rigid self-examination.  We are all liable to assume too soon that we have the thought.  Not to mar the look of the page, the questions are thenceforward placed only at the close of the chapters.

You will soon discover that these questions are so framed as to require you to read not only on the lines and between them, but also right down into them.  Even then you will not be able to answer all of the questions.  The information may not be in the book at all.  You may have to look around a long time for the answer.

If you occasionally come to a question which you can neither answer nor dismiss from your mind, be thankful for the question and that you are bright enough to be affected in this way.  You have doubtless discovered that some of your best intellectual work, your most fruitful study, has been done on just such questions.

After studying a provision of the constitution of the United States, you should be able to answer these four questions:  1.  What does it say? 2.  What does it mean? 3. Why was the provision inserted? 4.  How is it carried into practical effect?  Some of the provisions should be so thoroughly committed to memory that at any time they may be accurately quoted.  The ability to quote exactly is an accomplishment well worth acquiring.

After you have got through with a line of investigation it is a good thing to make a synopsis of the conclusions reached.  Hints are given at appropriate places as to how this may be done.  But the doing of it is left to you, that you may have the pleasure and profit resulting therefrom.

Finally, without fretting yourself unnecessarily, be possessed of a “noble dissatisfaction” with vague half-knowledge.  Try to see clearly.  Government is so much a matter of common sense, that you can assuredly understand much of it if you determine so to do.

STUDIES IN CIVICS.

PRELIMINARY CHAPTER.

GOVERNMENT:  WHAT IT IS AND WHY IT IS.

At the very beginning of our study, two questions naturally present themselves:  First.  What is government?  Second.  Why do we have such a thing?

These questions are much easier to ask than to answer.  The wisest men of the ages have pondered upon them, and their answers have varied widely.  Yet we need not despair.  Even boys and girls can work out moderately good answers, if they will approach the questions seriously and with a determination to get as near the root of the matter as possible.