ABSTRACT
The question of the origin of human knowledge has at all times aroused the greatest interest both in psychology and in the consideration of the perceptive faculties, and often enough in these discussions the child is referred to in exemplification, since in him one has to deal directly with the beginning of first experiences. Such reference is especially in favour with the exponents of empiricism who try to prove that all human perception, attention and knowledge are the result of sense-perceptions and their associations. By "sensation" we understand the simplest element of all sense-experience. This idea is indispensable to psychology, but its significance must not be misunderstood. In reality it expresses an abstraction; if we could break up any perceptual image into its component parts and imagine this breaking-up continued until no further division was possible, we should call these imaginary final results "simple sensations."
