But if we think more justly, we shall find that they are engaged in the most serious and important study; and if they had all the reason of a philosopher, they could not be more properly employed.

For it is this childish employment that enables them to make the proper use of their eyes.

They are thereby every day acquiring habits of perception, which are of greater importance than any thing we can teach them.

The original perceptions which nature gave them are few, and insufficient for the purposes of life; and, therefore, she made them capable of many more perceptions by habit.

And to complete her work, she has given them an unwearied assiduity in applying to the exercise by which those perceptions are acquired." Such is the education which nature gives her children, and we may add that another part of her discipline is, that by the course of things, children must exert all their muscular force, and employ all their ingenuity, in order to gratify their curiosity and satisfy their little appetites.