s and
power of discrimination, is capable of distinguishing and extracting
the dominant characteristics of objects, and it is upon these that it
proceeds to build up its internal structures.

Now our children, whose minds are thus ordered in relation to the
classification of attributes by the pedagogic aid they have received,
are led, not only to observe objects according to all the attributes
they have analyzed, but also to distinguish identities, differences,
and resemblances; and this work renders the extraction of one of the
qualities corresponding to one of the sensory groups which have been
considered apart, easy and spontaneous. That is to say, it will be
easy for the child thus to recognize the various qualities of an
object, to note, for instance, that certain objects are alike in form,
or alike in color; because "forms" and "colors" have already been
grouped into very distinctive categories, and they therefore recall
series of objects by similarity. This classification of attributes is
a kind of loadstone; it is an attractive force of a determined group
of qualities; and the objects which have this quality are attracted
thereto and united one with another; this is association by
similitude, almost of a mechanical kind. Books are of the shape of
prisms, one of our children might say; and such a pronouncement would
be the conclusion arrived at by a very complex mental process, were it
not that prismatic forms already existed as a well-defined series in
his mind, attracting to itself all the surrounding objects which
possess the same character. Thus the whiteness of sheets of paper,
interrupted by dark signs, may be attracted, by the colors
systematized in the mind, into a synthetic whole, which might make
the child say: Books are sheets of white printed paper.

It is in this _active_ work that individual differences may manifest
themselves. What will be the group of attributes which will attract
similar objects? And what will be the prevailing characteristic chosen
for the purpose of association by similarity? One child will note that
a curtain is light green; another that the same curtain is light in
weight; one will be struck by the whiteness of a hand, another by the
smoothness of its skin. For one child the window will be a rectangle;
to another it is something through which the blue of the sky may be
seen. The choice of prevailing characteristics made by children
becomes a "natural selection" harmonizing