ANIMALS. 305 



acrually found to grow four inches ; and in the whole about 

 eighteen inches long. But it is otherwise with the child when 

 born : if we suppose it eighteen inches at that time, it grows in 

 the first year six or seven inches ; in the second year, it grows 

 but 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 animal 

 machine. 



The growth of the mind in children seems to correspond with 

 that of the body. The comparative progress of the understand- 

 ng is greater in infants than in children of three or four years 

 old. If we oidy reflect a moment on the amazing acquisicions 

 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, therefore, 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 tv 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 remembers. 

 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 yoimg mind, with which it has 

 not become acquainted, without repeated exertions of the under 

 standing. At this period of life, the knowledge of every indi. 

 vidutJ object cannot be acquired without the same effort which, 

 when grown up, is employed upon the most abstract idea ; every 

 thing the child hears or sees, all the marks and characters of na- 

 ture, are as much unknown, and require the same attention lo 

 attain, as if the reader were set to understand the characters ot 

 an Ethiopic manuscript; and yet we see in how shoit a time 

 the little student begins to understand them all, and to give evi- 

 dent marks of early industry. 



It is very amusing to pursue the young mind, while employed 

 in its first attainments. At about a year old the same necessi- 



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