being used to it, then I can
do much better. I don't know why.

After going on hammering for some time, he stopped again, and said,
"There's another thing I wanted to tell you. Sometimes I think to
myself, that it is right to think of things that are sensible, and
then when I want to set about thinking of things that are sensible, I
_cannot_; I can only think of that over and over again."

_M----._ You can only think of what?

_H----._ Of those words. They seem to be said to me over and over
again, till I'm quite tired, "That it is right to think of things that
have some sense."

The childish expressions in these remarks have not been altered,
because we wished to show exactly how children at this age express
their thoughts. If M. Condillac had been used to converse with
children, he surely would not have expected, that any boy of seven
years old could have understood his definition of attention, and his
metaphysical preliminary lessons.

After these preliminary lessons, we have a sketch of the prince of
Parma's subsequent studies. M. Condillac says, that his royal highness
(being not yet eight years old) was now "perfectly well acquainted
with the system of intellectual operations. He comprehended already
the production of his ideas; he saw the origin and the progress of the
habits which he had contracted, and he perceived how he could
substitute just ideas for the false ones which had been given to him,
and good habits instead of the bad habits which he had been suffered
to acquire. He had become so quickly familiar with all these things,
that he retraced their connection without effort, quite
playfully."[119]

This prince must have been a prodigy! After having made him reflect
upon his own infancy, the abbe judged that the infancy of the world
would appear to his pupil "the most curious subject, and the most easy
to study." The analogy between these two infancies seems to exist
chiefly in words; it is not easy to gratify a child's curiosity
concerning the infancy of the world. Extracts from L'Origine des Loix,
by M. Goguet, with explanatory notes, were put into the prince's
hands, to inform him of what happened in the commencement of society.
These were his evening studies. In the mornings he read the French
poets, Boileau, Moliere, Corneille, and Racine. Racine, as we are
particularly informed, was, in the space of one year, read over a
dozen times. Wretched prince! Unfortunate Racine! The abbe
acknowledge