eyes and producing images upon
his sensorium, and that is all. He _sees_ only. There might have been a
similar image of the light in his mind the day before, but the reproduction
of the former image which constitutes memory does not probably take place
at all in his case if he is very young, so that there is not present to his
mind, in connection with the present image, any reproduction of the former
one. Still less does he make any mental comparison between the two. The
mother, as she sees the light of to-day, may remember the one of yesterday,
and mentally compare the two; may have many _thoughts_ awakened in her mind
by the sensation and the recollection--such as, this is from a new kind of
oil, and gives a brighter light than the other; that she will use this kind
of oil in all her lamps, and will recommend it to her friends, and so on
indefinitely. But the child has none of these thoughts and can have none;
for neither have the faculties been developed within him by which they are
conceived, nor has he had the experience of the previous sensations to form
the materials for framing them. He is conscious of the present sensations,
and that is all.

As he advances, however, in his experience of sensations, and as his mental
powers gradually begin to be unfolded, what may be called _thoughts_ arise,
consisting at first, probably, of recollections of past sensations
entering into his consciousness in connection with the present ones. These
combinations, and the mental acts of various kinds which are excited by
them, multiply as he advances towards maturity; but the images produced by
present realities are infinitely more vivid and have a very much greater
power over him than those which memory brings up from the past, or that his
fancy can anticipate in the future.

This state of things, though there is, of course, a gradual advancement in
the relative influence of what the mind can conceive, as compared with that
which the senses make real, continues substantially the same through all
the period of childhood and youth. In other words, the organs of sense and
of those mental faculties which are directly occupied with the sensations,
are the earliest to be developed, as we might naturally suppose would be
the case; and, by consequence, the sensible properties of objects and
the direct and immediate effects of any action, are those which have a
controlling influence over the volitions of the mind during all the earlier
pe