it could be, that a large face could be expressed in so little room; saying, it should have seemed as impossible to him, as to put a bushel of any thing into a pint. At first he could bear but very little light, and the things he saw, he thought extremely large; but upon seeing things larger, those first seen he conceived less, never being able to imagine any lines beyond the bounds he saw. The room he was in, he said, he knew to be but part of the house; yet he could not conceive that the whole house could look bigger. Before he was couched, he expected little advantage from seeing, worth undergoing an operation for, except reading and writing; for he said, he thought he could have no more pleasure in walking abroad than he had in the garden, which he could do safely and readily. And even blindness, he observed, had this advantage, that he could go any where in the dark much better than those who can see; and after he had seen, he did not soon lose this quality, nor desire a light to go about the house in the night. He said every object was a new delight, and the pleasure was so great that he wanted ways to express it; but his gratitude to his operator he could not conceal, never seeing him for some time without tears of joy in his eyes, and other marks of affection. A year after his first seeing, being carried upon Epsom Downs, and observing a large prospect, he was exceedingly delighted with it, and called it a new kind of seeing. And now being lately couched of his other eye, he says, that objects at first appeared large to this eye, but not so large as they did at first to the other; and looking upon the same object with both eyes, he thought it looked about twice as large as with the first couched eye only, but not double, that we can any ways discover." Mr. Cheselden adds in another paper printed by it self, that he has brought to sight several others who had no remembrance of ever having seen; and that they all gave the same account of their learning to see, as they called it, with the young gentleman above mentioned, though not in so many

any judgment about distances, that he thought all objects whatever touched his eyes, as he expressed it, as what he felt did his skin; and thought no objects so agreeable as those which were smooth and regular, though he could form no judgment of their shape, or guess what it was in any object that was pleasing to him. He knew not the shape of any thing, nor any one thing from another, however different in shape or magnitude, but upon being told what things were, whose form he knew before from feeling, he would carefully observe that he might know them again; but having too many objects to learn at once, he forgot many of them, and, as he said, at first he learned to know, and again forgot a thousand things in a day. One particular only, though it may appear trifling, I will relate. Having often forgot which was the cat and which the dog, he was ashamed to ask, but catching the cat, which he knew by feeling, he was observed to look at her steadfastly, and then setting her down said, so puss, I shall know you another time. He was very much surprised that those things which he had liked best, did not appear most agreeable to his eyes, expecting those persons would appear most beautiful that he loved most, and such things to be most agreeable to his sight that were so to his taste. We thought he soon knew what pictures represented which were showed to him, but we found afterwards we were mistaken; for about two months after he was couched, he discovered at once that they represented solid bodies; when to that time he considered them only as party-coloured planes, or surfaces diversified with variety of paint; but even then he was no less surprised, expecting the pictures would feel like the things they represented, and was amazed when he found those parts, which by their light and shadow appeared now round and uneven, felt only flat like the rest; and asked which was the lying sense, feeling or seeing? Being shown his father's picture in a locket at his mother's watch, and told what it was, he acknowledged a likeness, but was vastly surprised, asking how

simple notices would the senses soon convey to him their numerous acquired perceptions. He quickly becomes an adept in judging of sounds, tastes, odours, colours, extensions, figures. Hunger next assails him, and he goes in quest of food. Nature prompts him to gratify this appetite by eating the fruit upon the tree, which is immediately in view, and whose appearance and flavour are so grateful to the senses. It is impossible that he should determine, a priori, whether this fruit be wholesome or poisonous, and his indulgence in eating it would be to his benefit or injury. Were he at this time any thing of the philosopher in the true sense of the word, and capable of entering into disquisition about it, he would find good reason to conclude, that from the known wisdom of his Contriver, since it was agreeable to his senses, and he was prompted to partake of He is, as yet, however,

it, it must be innocent and useful. by no means the philosopher in the true meaning of the word, but the simple pupil of nature, and child of impulse. Impelled by hunger, and under the sure guidance of instinct, that same principle which, in the present state of society, leads the child to apply its mouth to the breast of its mother, he plucks the fruit, enjoys it, and finds himself sated, and from thence concludes that this, and things like it, to which he feels a similar propension, are his appointed sustenance. As the fruit has relieved him from the uneasiness of hunger, and gratified his palate in one instance, he justly concludes that it will produce the same results in others. By a similar process of experiment and observation, he discovers that water will quench his thirst, fire will warm him at one distance, and burn him at another, some fruits are wholesome, and others noxious, some animals are innocent, and others fierce and destructive. Thus from the very first step that man takes in knowledge, and the earliest intimations of sense, to his noblest speculations in regard to the physical and moral world, he unconsciously enlists him

self under the guidance of nature, and imbibes all his lessons in her school, and from listening to her unerring and sublime instructions. He could not by any force of reason determine a priori, that is, by reasoning from the nature and relations of things, that the fruit which hunger impelled him to devour, would not destroy him, that fire would burn, and water drown him, that some reptiles are harmless, and others venomous. From the outset, the whole compass of nature presents to him a profound abyss into which he cannot penetrate an inch without the line of experience and observation. When he avoids the fire that has once burnt him, casts away the fruits that have been found to be injurious, and flies from the viper that has endangered his life, what does he but by a just induction from facts, draw the conclusion that there is a quality in fire to pain and destroy him, in some fruits to injure him, and in some reptiles to poison him? Here then, we perceive the rise, and faint glimmerings of the inductive method of inquiry proposed by Lord Bacon, and for the discovery the recommendation and masterly illustration of which in his novum organum, he has rendered himself so deservedly celebrated. Man, as soon as he commenced his knowledge of nature, and passed from his original simple perceptions to those more complex conclusions to which he attained by reason and observation, had employed this instrument although ignorant of its power; and although philosophers for five thousand years afterwards, from the great Progenitor of our race to Thales, and from Thales to Lord Bacon, had lost sight of it, and losing sight of the broad and luminous way into which they had just entered under the guidance of nature, wandered into the intricate and shady paths of error, conjecture, and doubtful hypotheses. So just is the observation of Condillac in his Treatise upon Sensations. "Il resulte de cette veritè, que la nature commence tout en nous; aussi ai-je

commencer.

demontré que dans le principe ou dans le commencement, nos connoissances sont uniquement son ouvrage, que nous ne nous instruisons que d'apres ses leçons; et que tout l'art De raisonner consiste a continuer comme elle nous a fait Nature in all cases, is the safest guide, and most infallible instructor. She had put mankind in the true path of philosophical investigation, but under the influence of prejudice and passion, and amidst the refinements of an erring reason, they themselves soon deserted it. The first sun that Adam saw set, and the first darkness that overspread the earth, must have presented to him the most gloomy prospects, and filled him with frightful apprehensions. He could not have anticipated that it would ever rise again. He considered it no doubt a total extinction of the light of the world. But when he had repeatedly witnessed its risings and settings, his confidence in the permanence of the order of nature became fixed, and he concluded, that it would always continue to rise and set, and was the established cause of light and heat to the system. The same would be the case, in regard to all the other phenomena of nature. When the first cloud that he ever saw, overspread the hemisphere, it would be impossible for him to know, that it would bring rain, and might exhibit the phenomena of thunder and lightning; when the river, say the Euphrates, upon whose banks he lived, overflowed its banks, it would not be in his power to assign the cause of that appearance, and when any animal approached he would not be able to pronounce whether it would be harmless or not. Experience, however, would soon initiate him into all her lessons on these points. An accurate observation would soon teach him, that clouds were generally the cause of rain, while they themselves were occasioned by the condensation of vapours arising from the earth; that the stream was made to swell and overflow its banks, sometimes by heavy falls of