XIV 



THE CONCEPT 329 



attained the dignity of a five-word sentence, exhibiting its 

 " first attempt to relate a personal experience ' mimi 

 atta teppa, papa oi (Milk- gone [on] carpet, Papa [said] 

 Fie). 1 It was in the eleventh month that this child first 

 clearly used a word (atta^ which appears to be the German 

 equivalent of the English nursery fa-fa) with significance. 

 It is in the twenty-fifth that it first puts as many as five 

 words together to describe a past event. The length of 

 the interval, during which the child is rapidly developing 

 in every way, may serve to indicate the difficulty and im- 

 portance of the transition from appropriate exclamation to 

 articulate assertion of fact. 



Listening to a little boy in the stage to which we have 

 now traced Preyer's child, chattering happily to himself as 

 he played, I have often noticed how his talk consisted of a 

 running commentary on what he was doing. For example, 

 if he was building a station, he would be saying, " Now 

 put dat dar, man go dar, puff puff come in dar," and so 

 on, suiting in each case the word to the act, as though he 

 were practising the art of simple description, which indeed, 

 in an unconscious way no doubt, he was doing. As this 

 process advances, the child gradually builds up a true 

 world of " detachable " ideas, detachable because they are 

 applied in all manner of combinations, and serve as a link 

 between one percept and another, and between himself and 

 his hearer. 



6. When an element common to many experiences is 

 not merely recognised when it appears, but (i) is thought 

 of without being perceived, and (2) is capable of being 

 combined in thought with other elements, it becomes a 

 concept of general meaning and application. To be a 

 general concept, the element must be something for con- 

 sciousness apart from its perceptual setting, and it must be 

 applicable to a different setting. The concept grows up 

 by a movement in which synthesis and analysis interact. 

 The most important form of synthesis concerned is 

 comparison by which analysis is guided. Now, analysis 

 of a kind may be imputed to the practical judgment, in 

 which there is undoubtedly a certain selection of the 

 , 1 Op. tit. p. 155. 



