The Herbartians draw an important distinction between _psychical_ and
_logical_ concepts or general notions. The _psychical_ concept is
worked out naturally by a child or an adult as a result of the chance
experiences of life. It is usually a work of accident; is incomplete,
faulty, and often misleading. The _logical_ concept, on the other
hand, is scientifically correct and complete. It includes all the
common characteristics of the group and excludes all that are not
essential. It is a product of accurate and mature thinking. We all
possess an abundance of psychical concepts drawn from the miscellaneous
experiences of life. It is a large share of the school work, as we
have seen, to develop logical concepts out of these immature and faulty
psychical concepts. A child is disposed to call tadpoles fishes; and
later porpoises and whales are faultily classed with the fishes in the
same way. Nearly all our psychical concepts are subject to such loose
and faulty judgments. Even where one is accurate in his observations,
the conclusions naturally drawn are often wrong. For example, a child
that has seen none but red squirrels would naturally think all
squirrels red, and include the quality red in his general notion.
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