s, while there are hundreds of
thousands of varieties all about him; another will study a particular
kind of animal life, perhaps too minute to be seen with the naked eye,
while the world is teeming with animal forms which he has not time in
his short day of life to stop to examine; another will study the land
forms and read the earth's history from the rocks and geological strata,
but here again nature's volume is so large that he has time to read but
a small fraction of the whole. Another studies the human body and learns
to read from its expressions the signs of health and sickness, and to
prescribe remedies for its ills; but in this field also he has found it
necessary to divide the work, and so we have specialists for almost
every organ of the body.

2. THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION

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.!"

THE PERCEPT INVOLVES ALL RELATIONS OF THE OBJECT.--Nor is the case in
the least different with ourselves. When we wish to learn about a new
object or discover new facts about an old one, we do precisely as the
child does if we are wise. We apply to it every sense to which it will
afford a stimulus, and finally arrive at the object through its various
qualities. And just in so far as we have failed to use in connection
with it every sense to which it can minister, just in that degree will