CHILD AND ADULT THINKING.--What constitutes the difference in the
thinking of the child and that of the sage? Let us see whether we can
discover this difference. In the first place the relations seen by the
child are _immediate_ relations: they exist between simple percepts or
images; the remote and the general are beyond his reach. He has not had
sufficient experience to enable him to discover remote relations. He
cannot think things which are absent from him, or which he has never
known. The child could by no possibility have seen in the falling apple
what Newton saw; for the child knew nothing of the planets in their
orbits, and hence could not see relations in which these formed one of
the terms. The sage, on the other hand, is not limited to his immediate
percepts or their images. He can see remote relations. He can go beyond
individuals, and think in classes. The falling apple is not a mere
falling apple to him, but one of a _class of falling bodies_. Besides a
rich experience full of valuable facts, the trained thinker has acquired
also the habit of looking out for relations; he has learned that this is
the method _par excellence_ of increasing his store of knowledge and of
rendering effective the knowledge he has. He has learned how to think.
