ABSTRACT

Philosophy everywhere has preceded History, and men were desirous of deciphering the enigmas of the world before they paid much attention to the transactions of its past inhabitants. But if we examine the ways of an infant we shall cease to wonder at those of an infant civilization. The first questions that arouse and arrest the intellect of the child are scrupulously speculative, before you can make him take pleasure in the History of England; long before he can be taught to care about Magna Charta or the Bill of Rights, he questions you of the world-how he came into it-what is the nature of God-why it thunders and rains-and why the rainbow accompanies the shower. The Why perpetually torments him, and every child is born a philosopher. The child is the analogy of a people yet in childhood.