nce from the phenomena, may be still farther proved by an
experiment similar to one formerly recommended. Let the teacher, in the
middle of a story, ask some of the inattentive pupils a question
respecting some of the persons or things he is speaking about, and force
the reiteration of that part of the narrative in the child's mind by
getting an answer, and it will be found at the close, that although he
may remember nothing else of all that he heard, yet he will most
perfectly remember that part about which he was questioned, and
respecting which he returned an answer.

The same thing may be ascertained by our own experience, in hearing a
lecture or sermon, or even in conversation with a friend. In these
cases, as long as our attention is kept up,--that is, as long as we
continue to reiterate the ideas that we hear,--we may remember them; but
when our minds flag, or wander; in other words, when we cease to
reiterate the ideas of the speaker, the sounds enter our ear, but the
matter is gone. All that has been said during that period of inattention
has been lost; it never has formed, and never can form, part of our
knowledge.

Thus we see, that in the act of hearing oral communications, the
principle of reiteration of the ideas is obviously necessary for the
acquiring of knowledge; and we shall now shew, that it is equally
necessary in the act of reading.

Many persons must have witnessed children reading distinctly, and
fluently perhaps, who yet were not made one whit wiser by what they
read. The act of reading was correctly performed, and yet there was no
accession to their knowledge. The cause of this is easily explained. The
_ideas_ conveyed by the words have not been reiterated by the
mind,--perhaps they were never perceived. For as long as the act of
reading is difficult, the words undergo this process first, and the
ideas must be gleaned afterwards. Hence it is, that children, when
hurried from lesson to lesson before they can read them so easily as to
perceive and reiterate the ideas while reading, acquire the habit of
decyphering the words alone, and the eye from practice reads
mechanically, while the mind at the moment is usually wandering, or is
engaged in attending to something else. Nature, as we have before shewed
in the act of hearing, does not intend that the mind should pay
attention both to the words and the ideas at the same time; and reading
being only an artificial substitute for hearing, is made