sonal or ancestral. That is, what is perceived is also apperceived. By using this term it is not intended to show that there is a special process which we may call apperception. It simply shows the resultant of all the associative forces that are continually operative in determining our currents of thought. The study of association has shown that the character of previous experiences, their recency, habits of thought, memory, education, health, emotional tone, in short, one's "psycho-statical" condition, as termed by Lewes, determines these currents. Doubtless the term association would be sufficient, but inasmuch as the term apperception is in current use with reference to the interrelations between mental content and new experiences, it will be a useful one to employ. Apperception is not a process that is operative only occasionally. But it is usually in striking instances that the process is brought to our attention. Upon reflection we at once recognize that we are continually interpreting new facts by means of ideas already in our possession. The every-day effect of feelings upon our thoughts is an exemplification. The world appears roseate to one who has slept well and dined well and upon whom fortune in general has recently smiled; but the sombre tints alone are visible to one troubled with insomnia or indigestion, or upon whom calamity has fallen. In interpreting all experiences which come to us we rely upon past experiences to give them meaning. A traveller in a foreign land gains from his travel largely in proportion to what he takes with him. A common seaman travels the world over and knows nothing of the wealth of history that may be revealed to one who reads history before going. The peasant often lives a lifetime in sight of monuments and battlefields and remains unconscious of their meanings. What would Westminster Abbey mean to an unlettered serf? A mere stone pile not different in significance from any other. His soul would remain unthrilled by the thought of the presence of the mortal remains of so many of the world's illustrious dead. To the student of the world's history there must come feelings of reverence and awe as he loses himself in imaginative contemplation of that splendid phantom cavalcade which must pass before him in silent review. To one who comprehends, it seems, as Irving says, like stepping back into the regions of antiquity and losing one's self among the shades of former ages. Not only does the content of the mind determine our understanding of all new ideas presented, but reciprocally the new acquisitions modify the old ideas already possessed. This process goes on so gradually that it is scarcely perceptible. We usually do not notice it until we are suddenly brought to a consciousness that we have undergone a complete revision of opinion upon some large question. We say to ourselves: "Is it possible that I ever thought that?" "How could I have believed it?" Similarly our understanding of natural phenomena undergoes change. Our moral, religious, and political beliefs are also slowly but surely metamorphosed. - Definitions. It has readily become apparent that apperception, so far from being a distinct process, is a part of every act of perception, and also enters into every higher mental process of learning. It comprises the whole process of evaluation and assimilation. When we consider that through organic memory the effect of each acquisition is permanent and that it enters into n-fold relations with all preceding acquisitions, we can easily understand the meaning of apperception. The most significant definition of apperception ever given is one from the physiological point of view, formulated by Titchener. He says:1 "An apperception is a perception whose character is determined, wholly or chiefly, by the peculiar tendencies of a nervous system, rather than by the nature of the thing perceived." Morgan said of a particular apperceptive association: "Presumably from the physiological point of view certain cortical centres, the disturbances in which are associated with this particular form of consciousness, were already in a state of irritability or incipient change, and needed only a suggestive impulse to raise their molecular thrills into dominance." 2 1 A Primer of Psychology, p. 88. 2 Introduction to Comparative Psychology, p. 65. The following definitions and descriptions of apperception may serve to throw additional light upon the question: "Apperception may be roughly defined at first as the process of acquiring new ideas by the aid of old ideas already in the mind" (McMurry, General Method, p. 176). "Whenever by an act of attention mental data are unified into a related whole, this is an act of apperception" (J. Mark Baldwin Psychology, p. 56). "Every impression that comes in from without, be it a sentence which we hear, an object of vision, or an effluvium which assails our nose, no sooner enters our consciousness than it is drafted off in some determinate direction or other, making connection with the other materials already there, and finally producing what we call our reaction. The particular connections it strikes into are determined by our past experiences and the 'associations' of the present sort of impression with them" (James, Talks to Teachers, p. 157). "New habits tend to become assimilated to older habits. The result is that all new events in the conscious realm tend, in consequence of the workings of the associative process, to be assimilated in type to the conscious events which have already occurred" (Royce, Outlines of Psychology, p. 229). "The physician will at a glance detect in a patient symptoms which have escaped the anxious scrutiny of friends and relatives. The reason for this certainly does not lie in the greater intensity of his interest. He is able to note what they fail to note, because in his mind an apperceptive system has been organized, which they do not possess" (G. F. Stout, Analytic Psychology, II, p. 113). Apperception and Heredity.-Perception is not a matter of individual experience only, but also a resultant of hereditary tendencies. That a human being can accumulate so many experiences and such complex ones is not due to individual education alone, but also to instinctive impulses and inherited predispositions. To a lower animal and to the human infant the world probably is, as James says, "one big, blooming, buzz ing confusion." It is either that or a dead level of monotony, because of the unmeaning signs which strike upon unattuned senses. The signs which mean so much to us fall merely as These five equivocal figures are copied from Jastrow, "The sound waves upon the eye or light waves upon the ear. For example, a child of six months sees nothing in a drawing or a picture except a few blotches of color. The lines and lights and shades do not mean anything because of his limited experience with them. So far as I am able to discern, dogs and other animals recognize nothing in a picture or a photograph. That the child eventually learns to interpret conventional lines as representing objects, while dogs do not thus learn, is a difference due to original potentiality, which makes training possible in the one case and not in the other. Apperception and Illusions.-Every drawing or picture that we see depends upon our former experiences for its interpretation. Lines arranged in conventional ways have come through experience to mean certain things. A drawing or painting shows perspective only because we put into the representation what is not really there. Because of varied experiences we are able to see some combinations of lines and colors in different ways. If one looks at the accompanying drawing (Fig. 34) he can see either a plane figure representing two squares, one within the other, or the frustum of a cone. This latter may appear either upright or inverted. It may easily be thought of as a tunnel. The well-known equivocal figure of a book (Fig. 35), the stairs which may be seen from above or from below (Fig. 36), or the famous "six-seven" cubes (Fig. 37), all illustrate the same principle of apperception in interpreting drawings. The "rabbit or duck?" figure can be seen either way (Fig. 38), but how it is seen first, depends much upon where the attention happens to centre. In the stair-case figure the reason why it is so much easier to see the stairs from above is not because there is anything in the lines themselves that necessitate it. The representation is equally as good for stairs from below. The real reason of the mind's bias toward the other view comes from the experiences gained in the multiple number of times we have perceived the stairs from above compared with the scarcity of experiences in viewing them from below. It is even easier for us to perceive the stair-case than it is merely to see black lines. In some cases previous associations so bias the mind that it is impossible to perceive aright what is given through sensations. We then have illusions. A few examples may be cited to illustrate. |