It is here of importance to recollect, that almost all the information received by children, is of a sensible kind. They can form little or no idea of abstract truths. The mind and the memory must be stored with sensible objects,--first individually, and then by grouping,--before the child can arrive at a capacity for abstraction. Nature's first object, therefore, is to store the memory and imagination of the young with the names and images of things, which, as we have seen, are acquired individually, and, when once known, are remembered for future use. But those things which they have not yet seen, or felt, or heard, or tasted, are totally beyond their conception, and cannot be of any service, either in grouping, or classification.--Hence the great importance of allowing the young mind to act freely in acquiring new ideas by this principle of individuation; as without this, all the lessons into which such ideas shall afterward be introduced, must be in a great measure lost. Even adults can form no idea of an unknown object, except by compounding it of something that they already know. And this is at least equally the case with children; who, till they can group and compare objects which they have seen, can realize no idea of any thing, however simple, that has not previously been subjected to the senses.--Hence, therefore, the importance at this period of a child's education, of confining the attention chiefly to sensible objects, and of not confounding his faculties, by too early an introduction of abstract ideas. Here then we have been able to detect the method by which Nature selects, and enables her pupils to prepare the materials of which their future knowledge is to be compounded. These materials are the ideas of sensible objects, and their properties and uses; which must be gathered and stored one by one. By inducing them to attempt to seize even two at a time, they will most probably lose both, and their powers of collecting and storing will, by the same attempt, be injured and weakened. It is by means of this principle of individuation, that, with the most intense craving for information, and while placed among innumerable objects calculated to gratify it, the infant and the child remain perfectly collected, without the slightest appearance of distraction of mind, or confusion of ideas. With his thirst of knowledge ardent and constant, it enables him with the greatest delight to add hourly to his stores of knowledge, without difficulty, without irritation, and without fatigue.