ation. Trifling
daily events will recall their observations, and experience will
confirm, or correct, their juvenile theories. But if metaphysical
books, or dogmas, are forced upon children in the form of lessons,
they will, as such, be learned by rote, and forgotten.

To prevent parents from expecting as much as the abbe Condillac does
from the comprehension of pupils of six or seven years old upon
abstract subjects, and to enable preceptors to form some idea of the
perfect simplicity in which children, unprejudiced upon metaphysical
questions, would express themselves, we give the following little
dialogues, word for word, as they passed:

1780. _Father._ Where do you think?

_A----._ (Six and a half years old.) In my mouth.

_Ho----._ (Five years and a half old.) In my stomach.

_Father._ Where do you feel that you are glad, or sorry?

_A----._ In my stomach.

_Ho----._ In my eyes.

_Father._ What are your senses for?

_Ho----._ To know things.

Without any previous conversation, Ho---- (five years and a half old)
said to her mother, "I think you will be glad my right foot is sore,
because you told me I did not lean enough upon my left foot." This
child seemed, on many occasions, to have formed an accurate idea of
the use of punishment, considering it always as pain given to cure us
of some fault, or to prevent us from suffering more pain in future.

April, 1792. H----, a boy nine years and three quarters old, as he was
hammering at a work-bench, paused for a short time, and then said to
his sister, who was in the room with him, "Sister, I observe that when
I don't look at my right hand when I hammer, and only think where it
ought to hit, I can hammer much better than when I look at it. I don't
know what the reason of that is; unless it is because I think in my
head."

_M----._ I am not sure, but I believe that we do think in our heads.

_H----._ Then, perhaps, my head is divided into two parts, and that
one thinks for one arm, and one for the other; so that when I want to
strike with my right arm, I think where I want to hit the wood, and
then, without looking at it, I can move my arm in the right direction;
as when my father is going to write, he sometimes sketches it.

_M----._ What do you mean, my dear, by sketching it?

_H----._ Why, when he moves his hand (flourishes) without touching the
paper with the pen. And at first, when I want to do any thing, I
cannot move my hand as I mean; but after