kes the representation.

"But we find not only that the individual senses of the deaf-mute, his
own observation and apprehension, are formative factors in the
occurrences of sensation and perception, as is of course the case, but
that the qualities of the objects observed by him, and associated,
according to his individual tendencies, are also raised by him, through
comparison, separation, grouping--through his own act, therefore--to
general ideas, concepts, although as yet imperfect ones, and they are
named and recognized again by peculiar signs intelligible to himself.

"But in this very raising of an idea to a general idea, to a concept--a
process connected with the forming of a sign--is manifested the
influence of the lack of hearing and of speech upon the psychical
development of the deaf-mute. It appears at first to be an advantage
that the sign by which the deaf-mute represents an idea is derived from
the impression, the image, the idea, which the user of the sign himself
has or has had; he expresses by the sign nothing foreign to him, but
only what has become his own. But this advantage disappears when
compared with the hindrance caused by this very circumstance in the
raising of the individual idea to a general idea, for the fact that the
latter is designated by the image, or the elements of the image in which
the former consists, is no small obstacle to it in attaining complete
generality. The same bond that unites the concept with the conceiver
binds it likewise to one of the individual ideas conceived--e. g., when,
by pointing to his own flesh, his own skin, he designates the concept
flesh, skin (in general also the flesh or the skin of animals); whereas,
by means of the word, which the child who has all his senses is obliged
to learn, a constraint is indeed exercised as something foreign, but a
constraint that simply enforces upon his idea the claim of generality.

"One example more. The deaf-mute designates the concept, or general
idea, 'red' by lightly touching his lips. With this sign he indicates
the red of the sky, of paintings, of dress-stuffs, of flowers, etc.
Thus, in however manifold connection with other concepts his concept
'red' may be repeated, it is to him as a concept always _one_ and the
same only. It is _common_ to _all_ the connections in which it
repeatedly occurs."

But before the thinking deaf-mute arrived at the concept "red," he
formed for himself the ideas "lip, dress, sky, flower