rather with the objects which
are indicated by words--_i.e._, general objects.

Some writers would have us suppose that we do not arrive at general
notions except by the process of classification and abstraction, in the
mechanical manner that they lay down for this purpose. The fact is that
the mind has arrived at these general ideas in the process of learning
language. In infancy, most children have learned such words as _is_,
_existence_, _being_, _nothing_, _motion_, _cause_, _change_, _I_,
_you_, _he_, etc., etc.

But the point is not the mere arrival at these ideas. Education does
not concern itself with that; it does not concern itself with children
who have not yet learned to talk--that is left for the nursery.

It is the process of becoming conscious of these ideas by reflection,
with which we have to concern ourselves in education. Reflection is
everywhere the object of education. Even when the school undertakes to
teach pupils the correct method of observation--how to use the senses,
as in "object-lessons"--it all means _reflective_ observation,
_conscious_ use of the senses; it would put this in the place of the
_naive_ spontaneity which characterizes the first stages of
sense-perception.

We must not underrate these precepts of pedagogy because we find that
they are not what it claims for them--_i.e._, they are not methods of
first discovery, and of arrival at principles, but only methods of
reflection, and of recognizing what we have already learned. We see that
Plato's "Reminiscence" was a true form of statement for the perception
of truths of reflection. The first knowing is utterly unconscious of its
own method; the second or scientific form of knowing, which education
develops, is a knowing in which the mind knows its method. Hence it is a
knowing which knows its own necessity and universality.

VI.

Education presupposes the stage of mind reached in
productive memory; it deals with reflection; four stages
of reflection: (_a_) sensuous ideas perceive things; (_b_)
abstract ideas perceive forces or elements of a process;
(_c_) concrete idea perceives one process, a pantheistic
first principle, persistent force; (_d_) absolute idea
perceives a conscious first principle, absolute person.

We have considered in our psychological study thus far the forms of life
and cognition, contrasting the phase of nutrition with that of feeling,
or sensibility. We have seen the various forms of