2. The combination of perceptions into ideas; in particular into sense-intuitions and concepts. A sense-intuition (Anschauung) is a perception together with its cause, the object of the sensation; a concept (Begriff) results from the union of the previously separated perceptions, which are then called separate marks or qualities.
The investigation of each of these stages in the child is in itself a great labor, which an individual may indeed begin upon, but can not easily carry through uniformly in all directions.
I have indeed tried to collect recorded facts, but have found only very little trustworthy material, and accordingly I confine myself essentially to my own observations on my child. These are not merely perfectly trustworthy, even to the minutest details (I have left out everything of a doubtful character), but they are the most circumstantial ever published in regard to the intellectual development of a child. But I have been acquainted with a sufficient number of other children to be certain that the child observed by me did not essentially differ from other healthy and intelligent boys in regard to the principal points, although the time at which development takes place, and the rapidity of it, differ a good deal in different individuals. Girls often appear to learn to speak earlier than boys; but further on they seem to possess a somewhat inferior capacity of development of the logical functions, or to accomplish with less ease abstractions of a higher order; whereas in boys the emotional functions, however lasting their reactions, are not so delicately graduated as in girls.
Without regard to such differences, of which I am fully aware, the following chapters treat exclusively of the development of purely intellectual cerebral activity in both sexes during the first years. I acknowledge, however, that I have found the investigation of the influence of the affectional movements, or emotions, upon the development of the intellect in the child during the first years so difficult, that I do not for the present enter into details concerning it.
The observations relate, first, to the non-dependence of the child's intellect upon language; next, to the acquirement of speech; lastly, to the development of the feeling of self, the "I"-feeling.
[CHAPTER XVI.]
DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD'S INTELLECT INDEPENDENTLY
OF LANGUAGE.
A wide-spread prejudice declares, "Without language, no understanding"! Subtile distinctions between understanding and reason have limited the statement to the latter term. But even in the restricted form, "Without verbal language, no reason," it is at least unproved.
Is there any thinking without words? The question takes this shape.