Experience Precedes Understanding.

The Child Who Defines A Lie As Being A "naughty Word" Knows Perfectly Well That Lying Consists In Not Speaking The Truth. He Is Not, Therefore, Mistaking One Thing For Another, He Is Simply Identifying Them One With Another By What Seems To Us A Quaint Extension Of The Word "lie".

For The Fundamental Fact Of Human Psychology Is That Society, Instead Of Remaining Almost Entirely Inside The Individual Organism As In The Case Of Animals Prompted By Their Instincts, Becomes Crystallized Almost Entirely Outside The Individuals. In Other Words, Social Rules, As Durkheim Has So Powerfully Shown, Whether They Be Linguistic, Moral, Religious, Or Legal, Etc., Cannot Be Constituted, Transmitted Or Preserved By Means Of An Internal Biological Heredity, But Only Through The External Pressure Exercised By Individuals Upon Each Other.

Our Problem, From The Point Of View Of Psychology And From The Point Of View Of Genetic Epistemology, Is To Explain How The Transition Is Made From A Lower Level Of Knowledge To A Level That Is Judged To Be Higher.

Are We Forming Children Who Are Only Capable Of Learning What Is Already Known? Or Should We Try To Develop Creative And Innovative Minds, Capable Of Discovery From The Preschool Age On, Throughout Life?

The Essential Functions Of The Mind Consist In Understanding And In Inventing, In Other Words, In Building Up Structures By Structuring Reality.