ears, owes its
efficiency to the presence, more or less, of the principles which we
have been explaining, as embodied in the catechetical exercise.[14]

FOOTNOTES:

[13] Note L.

CHAP. IV.

_On the Means by which Nature may be imitated in Exercising the
Principle of Individuation._

While it appears to be a law of Nature, that there can be no
accumulation of knowledge without the act of reiteration, yet there are
other principles which she brings into operation in connection with it,
by which the amount of the various branches of knowledge received is
greatly increased, and the knowledge itself more easily comprehended,
and more permanently retained upon the memory.

The first of these principles, which we have before alluded to and
described, is that of "individuation;" that principle by which an infant
or child is induced to concentrate the powers of its mind upon a new
object, and that to the exclusion for the time of every other, till it
has become acquainted with it.

In a former chapter we found, that as long as a child remains solely
under the guidance of Nature, it will not allow its attention to be
distracted by different _unknown_ objects at the same time; but whenever
it selects one for examination, it invariably for the time abandons the
consideration of every other. The consequence of this is, that infants,
with all their physical and mental imbecility, acquire more real
knowledge under the tuition of Nature in one year, than children who are
double their age usually gain by the imperfect and unnatural exercises
of unreformed schools in three or four. The cause of this is easily
detected, and may be illustrated by the analogy of any one of the
senses. The eye, for example, like the mind, must not only see the
object, but it must look upon it--examine it--before the child can
either become acquainted with it at the time, or remember it afterwards.
But if unknown objects are made rapidly to flit past the eye of the
child, so that this cannot be done before there is time to fix the
attention upon any of them, the labour of the exhibitor is not only
lost, but the sight of the child is impaired;--the eye itself is
injured, and is less able, for some time afterwards, to look steadily
upon any other object, even when that object is stationary. Such is the
injury and the confusion created in the mind of a child when it is
hurried forward from object to object, or from truth to truth, before
the