ially
called into action during the early stages of a child's education, and
is never able to operate with vigour, till the reasoning powers of the
pupil begin to develope themselves.

The characteristic differences between the two principles, and their
respective uses in education, may be illustrated by a circumstance of
every-day occurrence. For example, a child who from infancy has been
brought up in a house of several apartments, gets acquainted with each
of the rooms by means of its contents. He has been in the habit of
seeing the heavy pieces of furniture in each apartment in a certain
place and order, and the room and its furniture, therefore, are
identified together, and remain painted upon his imagination exactly as
he has been in the habit of seeing them. In this case, the articles of
furniture in the room are grouped, and not classified; and are
remembered together, not on account of their nature and uses, but purely
on account of their position, and their relative arrangement in the
room. Most of our readers perhaps, will remember the strange feelings
produced in their minds during some period of their childhood, when in
the house of their infancy, some material alteration of this kind was
effected in one or more of the rooms. A change in the position of a bed,
or the abstraction or introduction of a chest of drawers, a wardrobe, or
other bulky piece of furniture, causes in the mind of the child an
effect much deeper, and more extensive, than in the adult. The former
picture of the place never having been observed or contemplated in any
other aspect, is painted by the imagination, and fixed upon his memory,
by long continued familiarity. But by this change it is suddenly
defaced; and the new group, partaking as it will do of some of the
elements of the old, produces feelings which are strange and
unaccountable, and entirely different from those of his parents, who
have been in the habit of contemplating the room and its furniture more
by the exercise of the judgment, than of the imagination; that is, more
by their uses, than by their appearance.

The cause of this strangeness of feeling in a child, arises from the
predominance of the principle of grouping, over that of classification.
He has as yet no knowledge of any of the apartments in the house, except
what he has received by grouping their contents. When, therefore, their
arrangement is materially altered, the reasoning powers not being as yet
able to