THE DEVELOPING CONCEPT AND ITS FUNCTIONS 19! 



are markedly indirect. Thus the child will class as a train its 

 toy train of iron, a piece of wood with a string tied to it, a row of 

 blocks, etc. As regards toy, the resemblances are even more 

 indirect, and consist rather in similarities of attitude than in 

 likenesses between the objects considered by themselves. 1 Nev 

 ertheless, if the concept be not merely artificial, but is a real 

 functional element in the child s mental economy, it must have 

 content as well as import the different toys must have some 

 common characteristics by which they may be discriminated 

 from other objects. Thus, for example, toys are also things papa 

 buys in a certain well-known store, they are things given it on 

 festive occasions, things kept in the chest over which it has 

 comparative freedom of control; they are distinctly not things 

 mamma buys in the grocery store, or things kept on the mantle- 

 piece or the desk, however attractive these might be to play with. 

 So much for the mode of association by which the elements 

 constituting the class concept are related. As compared with 

 the concept of the simple object, it is also to be noted that in the 

 general concept the relations to other concepts are far more 

 definite and constitute a far more prominent element in the struc 

 ture of the organization. Indeed, as the class and individual 

 concepts become clearly differentiated, such relations pass from 

 a quasi-logical to a logical form. The presence of such true 

 logical relationships is clearly evident where a relatively simple 

 class concept has undergone a further differentiation and has 

 developed into a more general class on the one hand and a sub 

 ordinate, relatively specific class on the other. We have such a 

 case of differentiation, where the child s earlier concept mamma 



J If some early concepts are based upon directly observable sense-differences, 

 these are found upon examination to be no exception to the general rule. Big 

 and little, hot and cold have an import for the child, which the color-tones 

 (for example) ordinarily have not. It is not mere sensible discriminability, however 

 gross, that calls for class distinctions. The common failure among primitive 

 peoples to have special terms for blue and green is not the slightest indication of an 

 undeveloped color-sense. Children, too, are usually very slow in noting differences 

 between colors; but in the kindergarten, where several of the occupations require 

 an attention to such differences, children of barely three years easily acquire an 

 intelligent mastery of a dozen color-names. 



