have to follow a little later when he goes to school and learns that "A ball is a
spherical body of any substance or size, used to play with, as by throwing,
kicking, or knocking, etc.!"
The Percept Involves All Relations of the Object.—Nor is the case in the least
different with ourselves. When we wish to learn about a new object or discover
new facts about an old one, we do precisely as the child does if we are wise. We
apply to it every sense to which it will afford a stimulus, and finally arrive at the
object through its various qualities. And just in so far as we have failed to use in
connection with it every sense to which it can minister, just in that degree will
we have an incomplete perception of it. Indeed, just so far as we have failed
finally to perceive it in terms of its functions or uses, in that far also have we
failed to know it completely. Tomatoes were for many years grown as
ornamental garden plants before it was discovered that the tomatoes could
minister to the taste as well as to the sight. The clothing of civilized man gives
the same sensation of texture and color to the savage that it does to its owner, but
he is so far from perceiving it in the same way that he packs it away and
continues to go naked. The Orientals, who disdain the use of chairs and prefer to
sit cross-legged on the floor, can never perceive a chair just as we do who use
chairs daily, and to whom chairs are so saturated with social suggestions and
associations.
The Content of the Percept.—The percept, then, always contains a basis of
sensation. The eye, the ear, the skin or some other sense organ must turn in its
supply of sensory material or there can be no percept. But the percept contains
more than just sensations. Consider, for example, your percept of an automobile
flashing past your windows. You really see but very little of it, yet you perceive
it as a very familiar vehicle. All that your sense organs furnish is a more or less
blurred patch of black of certain size and contour, one or more objects of
somewhat different color whom you know to be passengers, and various sounds
of a whizzing, chugging or roaring nature. Your former experience with
automobiles enables you to associate with these meager sensory details the
upholstered seats, the whirling wheels, the swaying movement and whatever else
belongs to the full meaning of a motor car.
The percept that contained only sensory material, and lacked all memory
elements, ideas and meanings, would be no percept at all. And this is the reason
why a young child cannot see or hear like ourselves. It lacks the associative
material to give significance and meaning to the sensory elements supplied by
the end-organs. The dependence of the percept on material from past experience