In the action and reaction of the individual with his special environment, he comes to distinguish himself from that which gives him pleasure and pain, and he will be attracted to the former, and repelled from the latter; and thus come to discriminate outward things from each other. The observation and discrimination of the particulars of nature is _thinking_. Sensuous impressions are the raw material of thoughts, but discrimination and classification of things according to their similarities, is the _operation_ of thought.
Education has an office in both the accumulation of sensuous impressions and the operation of thinking. The mother and nurse of each child must so order the objects about him, that his organs shall be properly impressed, and not overtaxed, because only so can they grow to be a good instrumentality for receiving even more delicate impressions. A tender sympathy for the unconscious little one, who is gradually coming to identify himself, and love,--such as only a mother can have in the greatest perfection,--are the special qualifications of the educator at this stage. Such a knowledge of nature's laws and order, as may enable the educator to lead the child's activity according to law and order, can alone help the child to reproduce, on his finite plane, an image of God's creative action. The educator who should succeed the nurse is the kindergartner, who, without lacking the sympathetic affection of the nurse, must add a knowledge of nature both material and spiritual, so that she may bring these opposites into their right connection with each other.
She will therefore lead the child to _produce_ something that shall serve as a ground for the operation of thinking. Instead of letting the blind will spend its energy in wild and aimless motion, she will present a desirable aim to attain, which will produce an effect that shall satisfy the heart, and produce an object that shall engage the attention, and stimulate to a reproduction of it, until it is thoroughly known, not only in its natural properties, but in the law of its being, which was the child's own method of producing the thing.
The genesis of the understanding, then, is, first, sensuous impression, which, reproducing itself intentionally, becomes, secondly, perception; and, thirdly, an adapting of means to ends, and thereby rising into judgment and knowledge. To get understanding precedes getting knowledge, which is the special work of the understanding when it is developed.