There is clearly then, a gap between what is in the mind and what can be expressed. This is particularly true in learning processes, when one is dealing with something previously unknown.

Mario Montessori Jr, Education for Human Development

Intellectual growth depends upon internalising events into a storage system that corresponds to the environment. It is this system that makes possible the child's increasing ability to go beyond the information encountered on a single occasion. He does this by making predictions and extrapolations from his stored model of the world.

Mario Montessori Jr, Education for Human Development

The training and sharpening of the senses has the obvious advantage of enlarging the field of perception and of offering an ever more solid foundation for intellectual growth. Without such concepts the intellect would lack precision and inspiration in its abstract operations.

Maria Montessori, The Discovery of the Child