intended to give the child a knowledge of
dimensions, nor are the plane insets designed to give him a conception
of forms; the purpose of these, as of all the other objects, is to
make the child exercise his activities. The fact that the child really
acquires by these means definite knowledge, the recollection of which
is vivid in proportion to the fixity and intensity of his attention,
is a necessary result; and, indeed, it is precisely the sensory
knowledge of dimensions, forms and colors, etc., thus acquired, which
makes the continuation of such internal exercises in fields
progressively vaster and higher, a possible achievement.

Hitherto, all psychologists have agreed that instability of attention
is the characteristic of little children of three or four years old;
attracted by everything they see, they pass from object to object,
unable to concentrate on any; and generally the difficulty of fixing
the attention of children is the stumbling-block of their education,
William James speaks of "that extreme mobility of the attention with
which we are all familiar in children, and which makes their first
lessons such rough affairs.... The reflex and passive character of the
attention ... which makes the child seem to belong less to himself
than to every object which happens to catch his notice, is the first
thing which the teacher must overcome.... The faculty of voluntarily
bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again is the very
root of judgment, character and will.... An education which should
improve this faculty would be _the_ education _par excellence_."

Thus man, acting by himself alone, never successfully arrests and
fixes that _inquiring_ attention which wanders from object to object.

In fact, in our experiment the attention of the little child was not
artificially maintained by a teacher; it was an object which fixed
that attention, as if it corresponded to some internal impulse; an
impulse which evidently was directed solely to the things "necessary"
for its development. In the same manner, those complex coordinated
movements achieved by a new-born infant in the act of sucking, are
limited to the first and unconscious need of nutrition; they are not a
conscious acquisition directed to a purpose.

Indeed, the conscious acquisition directed to a definite purpose would
be impossible in the movements of a new-born infant's mouth, as also
in the first movements of the child's spirit.

Therefore