ABSTRACT
Problems of the greatest theoretical importance are involved in the first appearance of concepts. Our concepts arise from our perceptions and are so similar to them, that Psychology can only distinguish differences of degree between these two modes of experience. Nevertheless, in the adult the two spheres, perceptions and conceptions, are on the whole quite separate. Indeed, they have to be separate if confusions that are dangerous to life are not to ensue. Hallucinations and illusions are not the rule in normal life. How do matters stand in the young child? For theoretical reasons we assume that it has to learn this distinction. The ‘ fibs ’ of childhood are known to everyone. A little mite of three or four will tell us in all seriousness that he has met a bear on his walk, and the like. These things must not be regarded as serious moral lapses, for the child has a vivid imagination and often cannot distinguish memories from events which have been merely imagined. Similarly some writers assume—and probably correctly—that in very early childhood no hard and fast line can be drawn between immediate sense impressions and reproduced contents of consciousness, that is, between percepts and concepts.
