6. Observable in children.
He that attentively considers the state of a child, at his first coming into the world, will
have little reason to think him stored with plenty of ideas, that are to be the matter of his future knowledge. It is
by degrees he comes to be furnished with them. And though the ideas of obvious and familiar qualities imprint
themselves before the memory begins to keep a register of time or order, yet it is often so late before some
unusual qualities come in the way, that there are few men that cannot recollect the beginning of their acquaintance
with them. And if it were worth while, no doubt a child might be so ordered as to have but a very few, even of the
ordinary ideas, till he were grown up to a man. But all that are born into the world, being surrounded with bodies
that perpetually and diversely affect them, variety of ideas, whether care be taken of it or not, are imprinted on the
minds of children. Light and colours are busy at hand everywhere, when the eye is but open; sounds and some
tangible qualities fail not to solicit their proper senses, and force an entrance to the mind;--but yet, I think, it will
be granted easily, that if a child were kept in a place where he never saw any other but black and white till he
were a man, he would have no more ideas of scarlet or green, than he that from his childhood never tasted an
oyster, or a pine-apple, has of those particular relishes.
