subject to the
same law. It is the _ideas_ that Nature induces us to grapple with; and
the reading of words like the hearing of language, is merely the means
employed to get at them. Hence the necessity of children being taught to
read fluently, and with perfect ease, before they leave the school; and
the neglect of this is the reason why so many after leaving school,
derive so little instruction from the use of books. Of these
individuals, experience shews, that many, who on leaving school could
not collect ideas by their mode of mechanical reading, yet persevere,
and at last teach themselves by long practice to understand what they
read; while there are not a few who, in similar circumstances, become
discouraged, abandon the practice of reading, and soon forget the art
altogether.

Of the correctness of these facts, every one may be convinced, by
recollecting what must often have taken place with himself. When at any
time the mind is exhausted while reading, we continue to read on, page
after page, and when we have finished, we find, that not a single truth
has made its way to the memory. Now this did not arise from any
difficulty in comprehending the ideas in the book, because it does not
make much difference whether the subject has been simple or otherwise;
neither did it arise from the want of all mental activity, for the mind
was so much engaged as to read every word and every letter in the pages
upon which we were occupied. But it arose entirely from the want of that
principle of which we are here speaking. The words were read
mechanically, and the ideas were either not thought of, or at least they
were not reiterated by the mind, and therefore it is that they are
lost,--and no effort can ever again recall them. The proof of the
accuracy of these views will still be found in the circumstance, that
if, while the person is reading, this act of the reiteration of some one
or more of the ideas be in any way forced upon him, _these_ ideas thus
reiterated will afterwards be remembered, although all the others are
lost.

Here then we have arrived at a principle connected with the acquisition
of knowledge, by attending to which education may be made most efficient
for that purpose; but without which, education must remain a mere
mechanical routine of barren exercises. No idea, no truth, we have seen,
can ever form part of our knowledge, till it has undergone this
particular mental process, which we have called "reitera