Difference of experience produces a difference of education.

strongly on his memory the idea of their unequal weight and hardness.

If he chance to throw the same stone against one of the flower-pots placed on the borders of a canal, he will then learn that some bodies are boken by a blow that others resist.

There is therefore no man of discernment who must not see in all objects, so many tutors charged with the education of our infancy*.

But are not these instructors the same for all? No The chance is not precisely the same for any two persons; but suppose it were, and that two children owed their dexterity in walking, running, and leaping to their falls; I say, that as it is impossible they should both have precisely the same number of falls, and equally painful, chance cannot furnish them both with the same instructions.

Place two children on a plain, in a wood, a theatre, an assembly, or a shop. They will not, by their natural position, be struck precisely in the same manner, nor consequently affected with the same sensations. What different subjects moreover are by daily occurrences incessantly offered to the view of these two children.

* If I have here described the several states of infancy in a cursory manner, it is because I am fearful of tiring the reader. What imports him to know the time the child is in passing through the several periods? It is sufficient that they are passing through. It is by no means necessary that my narration should be as long as the infancy of man.

Two

Difference of the impressions produced by different objects.

Two brothers travel with their parents, and to arrive at their native place they must traverse long chains of mountains. The eldest follows his father by the short and rugged road. What does he see? Nature in all the forms of horror; mountains of ice that hide their heads among the clouds, massy rocks that hang over the traveller's head, fathomless caverns, and ridges of arid hills, from which torrents rush with a tremendous roar. The younger follows his mother through the most frequented roads, where nature appears in all her pleasing forms. What objects does he behold? Every where hills planted with vines. and fruitful trees, and vallies where the wandering streams divide the meadows, peopled by the browzing herds.

These two brothers have, in the same journey, seen very different prospects, and received very different impressions. Now a thousand incidents of the same nature may produce the same effects. Our life is nothing more, so to say, than a long chain of similar incidents; let men never flatter themselves, therefore, with being able to give two children precisely the same education.

What influence moreover may a difference of instruction, occasioned by a trifling difference in surrounding objects, have on the mind? Who does not know that a small number of dissimilar ideas, combined with those which two men already have in common, can produce a total difference in their manner of seeing and judging?

VOL. 1.

Supposing

Different impressions produced by the same objects.

Supposing, however, that chance should constantly offer the same objects to two persons, does it present them when their minds are precisely in the same situation, and when consequently those objects will make the same impressions on them?

CHAP. IV.

OF THE DIFFERENT IMPRESSIONS WHICH OBJECTS MAKE ON US.

THAT different objects produce different sensations is self-evident. Experience, moreover, teaches us that the same objects excite different impressions, according to the moment at which they present themselves; and it is, perhaps, to these different impressions, that we are principally to attribute the diversity and great inequality that is to be found in men educated in the same country, in the same habits and manners, and who have moreover the same objects before their eyes.

There are in the mind certain moments of perfect repose, when its surface is not agitated by the least breath of passion. The objects that then present themselves sometimes engage our whole attention; we examine more at leisure their different appearances, and

the

The impressions of objects depend on accidental circumstances.

the impressions they make on our memory are much more complete and durable.

Occurrences of this sort are very common, especially in early youth. A child commits a fault, and for punishment is shut up by himself in a chamber. What does he do? He sees in the window some pots with flowers, he plucks some of them, he considers their colours, and remarks their shades; his idle situation seems to give an additional discernment to his sight. It is then with the child as with the blind; if the latter have commonly the senses of hearing and feeling more keen than other men, it is because he is not like them disturbed by the action of the light upon his eyes, because he is the more attentive, and more concentered within himself; and, lastly, to supply the sense he wants, he is, as M. Diderot remarks, more interested to improve those senses that remain.

The impressions that objects make on us depend principally on the moment at which those objects strike us. In the example just mentioned, it is the attention that the child is, as it were, forced to give to the only objects that are exposed to his sight, which makes him discover in the colours and form of the flowers, those nice differences that a distracted view, or a superficial glance would not have permitted him to observe. It is thus that a punishment, or some similar incident, frequently determines the taste of a young man, and makes him a painter of flowers; by first giving him some knowledge of their beauty, and then a love for those pictures that represent them.

Of a College education.

Now to how many similar incidents is the education of youth liable? and how can we imagine them to be the same in any two individuals? How many other causes, moreover, prevent two children, whether at home or at college, from receiving the same education?

CHAP. V.

OF A COLLEGIATE EDUCATION.

CHILDREN that have been brought up in the same college, are supposed to have received the same education. But at what age do they enter the college? At seven or eight years. Now, at that age they have already charged their memories with ideas, which being partly owing to chance, and partly acquired in the parental abode, arise from the state, the character, the fortune, and wealth of their parents. Can we then be surprised that children entering a college with ideas frequently so different, should discover more or less ardour for study, more or less taste for certain branches of science; and that the ideas they have already acquired being united with those they receive in common in the schools, should produce in them a considerable alteration? From ideas thus altered, and combining again among themselves, must frequently arise unexpected productions.

Hence