o man in the social state, and he has no means whatever
of knowing any thing about it except by instruction.

There is not only no ground for expecting that children should perceive any
such necessity either by any kind of instinct, or intuition, or embryo
moral sense, or by any reasoning process of which his incipient powers are
capable; but even if he should by either of these means be inclined to
entertain such an idea, his mind would soon be utterly confused in regard
to it by what he observes constantly taking place around him in respect to
the use of language by others whose conduct, much more than their precepts,
he is accustomed to follow as his guide.

_A very nice Distinction_.

A mother, for example, takes her little son, four or five years old, into
her lap to amuse him with a story. She begins: "When I was a little boy I
lived by myself. All the bread and cheese I got I laid upon the shelf," and
so on to the end. The mother's object is accomplished. The boy is amused.
He is greatly interested and pleased by the wonderful phenomenon taking
place within him of curious images awakened in his mind by means of sounds
entering his ear--images of a little boy living alone, of his reaching up
to put bread and cheese upon a shelf, and finally of his attempting to
wheel a little wife home--the story ending with the breaking and downfall
of the wheelbarrow, wife and all. He does not reflect philosophically upon
the subject, but the principal element of the pleasure afforded him is the
wonderful phenomenon of the formation of such vivid and strange images in
his mind by means of the mere sound of his mother's voice.

He knows at once, if any half-formed reflections arise in his mind at all,
that what his mother has told him is not true--that is, that the words and
images which they awaken in his mind had no actual realities corresponding
with them. He knows, in the first place, that his mother never was a boy,
and does not suppose that she ever lived by herself, and laid up her bread
and cheese upon a shelf. The whole story, he understands, if he exercises
any thought about it whatever--wheelbarrow catastrophe and all--consists
only of words which his mother speaks to him to give him pleasure.

By-and-by his mother gives him a piece of cake, and he goes out into the
garden to play. His sister is there and asks him to give her a piece of his
cake. He hesitates. He thinks of the request long enough to form a distinct