COMMON THOUGHT, SCIENCE, AND REFLECTIVE THOUGHT 7.

COMMON THOUGHT .-- Those who have given little attention to the study of the human mind are apt to suppose that, when the infant opens its eyes upon the new world of objects surrounding its small body, it sees things much as they do themselves.

They are ready to admit that it does not know much _about_ things, but it strikes them as absurd for any one to go so far as to say that it does not see things--the things out there in space before its eyes.
Nevertheless, the psychologist tells us that it requires quite a course of education to enable us to see things--not to have vague and unmeaning sensations, but to see things, things that are known to be touchable as well as seeable, things that are recognized as having size and shape and position in space.

And he aims a still severer blow at our respect for the infant when he goes on to inform us that the little creature is as ignorant of itself as it is of things; that in its small world of as yet unorganized experiences there is no self that is distinguished from other things; that it may cry vociferously without knowing who is uncomfortable, and may stop its noise without knowing who has been taken up into the nurse's arms and has experienced an agreeable change.
This chaotic little world of the dawning life is not our world, the world of common thought, the world in which we all live and move in maturer years; nor can we go back to it on the wings of memory.

We seem to ourselves to have always lived in a world of things,--things in time and space, material things.