117 



The first steps of this process, naturally as they follow eacli 

 other, will never, if controverted, admit of demonstration ; 

 for we can scarcely hope, that in contradiction to those law^s 

 which have hitherto governed the infancy of man, his mind 

 will ever be endued with the faculty of recollecting every im- 

 pression it received from the first dawn of its existence ; and 

 until there is an instance of such an event, we may conjec- 

 ture, but we cannot know. Yet the concluding steps of the 

 process are so far advanced beyond the regions of mere pro- 

 bability, that their certainty in no small degree confirms the 

 credibility of those that precede them, not only by their reci- 

 procal harmony, but their united accordance with reason. 

 Still it must be confessed that we have facts within our know- 

 ledge, which seem to refute the doctrine altogether. In Che- 

 selden's invaluable case, referred to by almost every writer on 

 the subject of vision, the young man couched for cataract at 

 first perceived objects of a much larger size than they really 

 were; when according to the above principles, we would ra- 

 ther expect them to appear much smaller, and reduced to a 

 scale as diminutive as their picture on the retina. But we 

 must recollect that the patient was not an infant^— that he 

 was acquainted by the touch with the dimensions of objects — 

 and that the idea of space had long been familiar to him. 

 We must also recollect that like others affected with the same 

 species of blindness, he could distinguish light from dark- 

 ness, and even discern two or three colours. It is therefore 

 probable, that immediately after birth, he perceived a dirn 



