396 HISTORY OF 



four inches ; in the third year about three ; and 

 so on, at the rate of about an inch and a half, or 

 two inches, each year, till the time of puberty, 

 when nature seems to make one great last effort, 

 to complete her work, and unfold the whole ani- 

 mal machine. 



The growth of the mind in children seems to 

 correspond with that of the body. The compa- 

 rative progress of the understanding is greater in 

 infants than in children of three or four years old. 

 If we only reflect a moment on the amazing ac- 

 quisitions that an infant makes in the first and 

 second years of life, we shall have much cause for 

 wonder. Being sent into a world where every 

 thing is new and unknown, the first months of 

 life are spent in a kind of torpid amazement ; an 

 attention distracted by the multiplicity of objects 

 that press to be known. The first labour, there- 

 fore, of the little learner is, to correct the illusions 

 of the senses, to distinguish one object from 

 another, and to exert the memory, so as to know 

 them again. In this manner a child of a year old 

 has already made a thousand experiments ; all 

 which it has properly ranged, and distinctly re- 

 members. Light, heat, fire, sweets and bitters, 

 sounds soft or terrible, are all distinguished at the 

 end of a very few months. Besides this, every 

 person the child knows, every individual object it 

 becomes fond of, its rattles or its bells, may be 

 all considered as so many new lessons to the young 

 mind, with which it has not become acquainted 

 without repeated exertions of the understanding. 

 At this period of life, the knowledge of every in- 



