HOW A PERCEPT IS FORMED.--How, then, do we proceed to the discovery of
this world of objects? Let us watch the child and learn the secret from
him. Give the babe a ball, and he applies every sense to it to discover
its qualities. He stares at it, he takes it in his hands and turns it
over and around, he lifts it, he strokes it, he punches it and jabs it,
he puts it to his mouth and bites it, he drops it, he throws it and
creeps after it. He leaves no stone unturned to find out what that thing
really is. By means of the _qualities_ which come to him through the
avenues of sense, he constructs the _object_. And not only does he come
to know the ball as a material object, but he comes to know also its
uses. He is forming his own best definition of a ball in terms of the
sensations which he gets from it and the uses to which he puts it, and
all this even before he can name it or is able to recognize its name
when he hears it. How much better his method than the one he will have
to follow a little later when he goes to school and learns that 'A ball
is a spherical body of any substance or size, used to play with, as by
throwing, kicking, or knocking, etc.!'
