preference he gave the girls over the boys who came to play with him,
and his readiness to part with any thing to them.

In a word, there is not one of all the various emotions which agitate
the breast in maturity, that may not be discerned almost from the
birth, _hope_, _jealousy_, and _despair_ excepted, which, tho' they
bear the name in common with those other more natural dispositions of
the mind, I look upon rather as consequentials of the passions, and
arising from them, than properly passions themselves: but however that
be, it is certain, that they are altogether dependant on a fixation of
ideas, reflection, and comparison, and therefore can have no entrance
in the soul, or at least cannot be awakened in it, till some degree of
knowledge is attained.

Thus do the dispositions of the _infant_ indicate the future _man_;
and though we see, in the behaviour of persons when grown up, so vast
a difference, yet as all children at first act alike, I think it may
be reasonably supposed, that were it not for some change in the
constitution, an equal similitude of will, desires, and sentiments,
would continue among us through maturity and old age; at least I am
perfectly perswaded it would do so, among all those who are born in
the same climate, and educated in the same principles: for whatever
may be said of a great genius, and natural endowments, there is
certainly no real distinction between the _soul_ of the man of _wit_
and the _ideot_; and that disproportion, which we are apt to behold
with so much wonder, is only in fact occasioned by some or other of
those innumerable and hidden accidents, which from our first coming
into the world, in a more or less degree, have, an effect upon the
organs of sense; and they being the sole canals through which the
spirit shews itself, according as they happen to be extended,