To Understand Is To Invent.

Children Have Real Understanding Only Of That Which They Invent Themselves, And Each Time That We Try To Teach Them Too Quickly, We Keep Them From Reinventing It Themselves.

There Is Little Mysticism Without An Element Of Transcendence, And Conversely, There Is No Transcendence Without A Certain Degree Of Egocentrism. It May Be That The Genesis Of These Experiences Is To Be Sought In The Unique Situation Of The Very Young Child In Relation To Adults. The Theory Of The Filial Origin Of The Religious Sense Seems To Us Singularly Convincing In This Connection.

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

At One Time, Many Philosophers Held That Faultless "laws Of Thought" Were Somehow Inherent, A Priori, In The Very Nature Of Mind. This Belief Was Twice Shaken In The Past Century; First When Russell And His Successors Showed How The Logic Men Employ Can Be Defective, And Later When Freud And Piaget Started To Reveal The Tortuous Ways In Which Our Minds Actually Develop.

Every Acquisition Of Accommodation Becomes Material For Assimilation, But Assimilation Always Resists New Accommodations.