al
human child in the first weeks after birth.

After discrimination of the luminous sensations, the boundary-lines of
bright plane surfaces are next clearly discerned; then come forms, and,
last of all, the distances of these.

With reference to this progress of the normal infant in learning to see,
the accounts of persons born blind and afterward surgically treated are
again of great value. After the famous question put by Molyneux to
Locke, whether an intelligent person, blind from birth, would be able
immediately after an operation to distinguish a sphere from a cube by
means of the eye alone, had been answered in the negative, the opinion
was accepted as satisfactory that such a person learns the distinction
only by means of the sense of touch. Thus, the perception of difference
would come later, after the sight of different forms, only by means of
the tactual memory.

In truth, however, very many forms are discerned as different purely by
means of the eye, without the possibility of aid from any other sense.
Phenomena exclusively optical, which, like the rainbow, can not be
apprehended by touch or by hearing, are distinctly perceived by the
child at a very early period. Without touching, the different forms of
objects would be perceived by means of sight alone, and that even by a
child unable to touch, through movements of the eyes and head, changes
of bodily position, of attitude and posture, and through practice in
accommodation and in the observation of differences of brightness.

The fact correctly predicted by Molyneux, that those born blind but
afterward surgically treated can not, by means of the eye alone,
distinguish the form of a sphere from that of a cube, must accordingly
be supplemented to this extent, viz., that such persons are capable,
just as are normal children who can see, of learning this difference of
form by means of the eye alone without the direct intervention of the
sense of touch; for the co-ordination of the retinal excitations in
space and time by means of the intellect, quite independently of all
impressions from other departments of sense, is possible, and is in
countless cases actual, just as is the learning of differences of form
solely by means of the sense of touch in children who are born blind and
never learn to see.

THE END.

D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS.

NEW VOLUMES IN THE INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES.

_EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT_. By ALF