the mariner expecting a storm,
there was first the knowledge of the fact, that the "sky was in a
certain state." Now of this knowledge every person on board might have
been in possession as well as the master himself, without the slightest
benefit accruing to themselves or the ship, unless they had been
trained, or enabled to draw the proper inference or lesson from it. The
mere possession of the knowledge, therefore, would have been of no
advantage. But the practised eye, and the previous experience of the
master, enabled him to draw the inference, that "there will be a
storm." Even this, however, would not have saved the ship and crew,
without the third, and the most important step of all,--the application
of that inference or lesson to their present condition. It was that
which induced him to give the necessary orders to prepare for the storm,
and thus to secure the safety both of the ship and of all on board.

Again, in the case of the infant burning its finger, there appears to be
something like a similar process, which we can trace much better than
the child itself. The child puts its finger to the flame of the candle,
and it feels pain; from which it learns, for the first time, that flame
burns. This is the knowledge which it has acquired. But there is also an
inference drawn from that knowledge, not by reasoning, but by the
operation of the principle under consideration, an inference of which it
is probable the child itself at the time is unconscious, but the
existence of which is sufficiently proved by its uniform conduct
afterwards. By the operation of this principle in the child's mind,
before he can reason, he has inferred, that if he shall again touch
flame, he will again feel pain. He will very probably forget the
particular circumstance in which his finger was burned, but the
inference then drawn,--the impression made upon the mind, and which
corresponds to an inference,--still remains, and is made the chief
instrument which Nature employs in this most important part of all her
valuable educational processes. The child accordingly is found ever
after, not only preserving the particular finger that was burned, but
all its fingers and members, from a burning candle; and not from a
candle only, but from fire and flame of every kind.

This appears to be the natural order of that process of which we are
here speaking; and before leaving it, there are two or three
circumstances connected with it, that we ough