FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43  
44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   >>   >|  
ere in space before its eyes. Nevertheless, the psychologist tells us that it requires quite a course of education to enable us to see things--not to have vague and unmeaning sensations, but to see things, things that are known to be touchable as well as seeable, things that are recognized as having size and shape and position in space. And he aims a still severer blow at our respect for the infant when he goes on to inform us that the little creature is as ignorant of itself as it is of things; that in its small world of as yet unorganized experiences there is no self that is distinguished from other things; that it may cry vociferously without knowing who is uncomfortable, and may stop its noise without knowing who has been taken up into the nurse's arms and has experienced an agreeable change. This chaotic little world of the dawning life is not our world, the world of common thought, the world in which we all live and move in maturer years; nor can we go back to it on the wings of memory. We seem to ourselves to have always lived in a world of things,--things in time and space, material things. Among these things there is one of peculiar interest, and which we have not placed upon a par with the rest, our own body, which sees, tastes, touches, other things. We cannot remember a time when we did not know that with this body are somehow bound up many experiences which interest us acutely; for example, experiences of pleasure and pain. Moreover, we seem always to have known that certain of the bodies which surround our own rather resemble our own, and are in important particulars to be distinguished from the general mass of bodies. Thus, we seem always to have been living in a world of _things_ and to have recognized in that world the existence of ourselves and of other people. When we now think of "ourselves" and of "other people," we think of each of the objects referred to as possessing a _mind_. May we say that, as far back as we can remember, we have thought of ourselves and of other persons as possessing minds? Hardly. The young child does not seem to distinguish between mind and body, and, in the vague and fragmentary pictures which come back to us from our early life, certainly this distinction does not stand out. The child may be the completest of egoists, it may be absorbed in itself and all that directly concerns this particular self, and yet it may make no conscious distinction between a bod
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43  
44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
things
 

experiences

 
knowing
 

distinguished

 
interest
 
possessing
 
distinction
 

people

 

bodies

 

remember


thought

 

recognized

 

general

 

particulars

 

important

 

existence

 

resemble

 

living

 

enable

 

acutely


education

 

surround

 

objects

 

Moreover

 
pleasure
 
completest
 

egoists

 

absorbed

 

conscious

 

directly


concerns

 
pictures
 
fragmentary
 

persons

 

requires

 

Hardly

 

distinguish

 

Nevertheless

 

psychologist

 
referred

experienced
 
dawning
 

chaotic

 

agreeable

 
change
 

severer

 

infant

 

inform

 

creature

 
ignorant