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FIRESIDE EDUCATION. |
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make trial after trial; he must be aided and instructed; in short, every muscle in his body is to be educated to perform its task.
There are many birds, particularly those of the gallinaceous tribe, which in twelve hours after they are hatched run about and pick up seeds, selecting them with careful discrimination from amidst the earth and gravel among which they are scattered. How different is it with the infant! How many efforts must it make before it can even pick up a pin ! It is, in the first place, to acquire a knowledge of distances; it must then learn to measure these with its arm; that arm, too, must be instructed; the thumb and finger must be taught. All this various knowledge must be acquired by patient training, and brought to harmonize in one effort. Thus, an act which animals perform instinctively, and immediately after they come into existence, cannot be performed by a child until it has passed through an elaborate education of several months.
The animal tribes have no articulate language, but such as they have is intuitive. How far it is the instrument of communicating ideas, we cannot precisely determine; but we know that their various cries are understood by them, and serve, to some extent, the purposes of our |
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