OF THE EXTERNAL SENSES. 3o3

opens, they appear to enjoy it in the moft com-plete perfection.

It seems difficult to suppose that man is theonly animal of which the young are not endowedwith some instinctive perception of this kind. Theyoung of the human species, however, continueso long in a state of entire dependency, they muffbe so long carried about in the arms of their mo-thers or of their nurfes, that fuch an inf! motiveperception may feem lefs neceffary to them thanto any other race of animals. Before it could beof any ufe to them, observation and experiencemay, by the known principle of the associationof ideas, have sufficiently connected in theiryoung minds each visible obje£I with the corres-ponding tangible one which it is fitted to repre-sent. Nature, it may be said, never bellows uponany animal any faculty which is not either neces-sary or useful, and an inftinft of this kind wouldbe altogether useless to an animal which muff ne-cessarily acquire the knowledge which the inffinâis given to supply, long before that inftinft couldbe of any ufe to it. Children, however, appearat fo very early a period to know the distance,the shape, and magnitude of the different tangi-ble objefls which are presented to them, that Iam disposed to believe that even they may havesome inftinftive perception of this kind ; thoughpoffibly in a much weaker degree than the greaterpart of other animals. A child that is scarcely amonth old, ftretches out its hands to feel any littleplay-thing that is presented to it. It distinguishes