THE CHILD IN THE WORLD OF OBJECTS AND EVENTS 163
not by generalization from the facts of experience but through
linguistic instruction, their full significance coming home to us
through the cumulative results of an acquaintance with particular
instances of them. It would not be difficult to show that the
progress of science "has been largely due to research into the
significance of the abstractions first isolated and named in such
words as mass, volume, gravitation, pressure, etc. And among men
of science the preference for a particular perspective of facts is
presupposed by their frequent use of certain terms which one
may readily discover in their writings. "One values most highly
predictability, another picturableness, a third intelligibility, a fourth
permanence, a fifth harmony, order, or system, a sixth, like most meta-
physicians, attaches the highest value to unity, another to simplicity,
coherence, or finality; yet another to measurableness, and so on."1
It may be added that the craftsman and the artist do but learn
to apply, though with consummate ingenuity and skill, the less
easily acquired concepts with which their training is planned
to furnish them. What, a Chippendale or a Sheraton, say,
does is to approach the problem of chair construction with such
general ideas in mind as are expressed by the words strength,
durability, elegance, balance, comfort, etc. These ideas, in so far as
they have reference to chairs and nothing else, may perhaps be
represented in the mind by pictorial images and by them alone.
But in so far as they include references to no other articles than
chairs, mental activity about chair design is not likely to be very
fertile, and the wider associations of these words, enriched by
reading and by contemplation of natural and traditional forms
of beauty, are best held together in the mind by linguistic ties.
Words, that is to say, may screen reality from us, but they may
equally well enable us to see reality the more clearly and deal
with it more effectively. The language which has been devised
for enabling us to deal with the measurable aspects of phenomena
is a striking example of the truth that words may give us the
ability to control the observable world in a manner quite im-
possible to those whose development has been entirely unschooled.
16. THE IDEA OF NUMBER
We have already "emphasized the importance of introducing
the child to number as such through language. The comparison
of things in the child's environment as bigger or smaller, longer or
shorter, heavier or lighter, farther or nearer, one, more, or a lot, etc.,
is as essential to the discovery of the quantitative relations in
given situations as the acquirement of the art of counting.
1 William McDougall, The Frontiers of Psychology (London, Nisbet, 1936).
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