EYE-MINDEDNESS AND EAR-MINDEDNESS. 597 



EYE-MINDEDNESS AND EAR-MINDEDNESS.* 



By JOSEPH JASTROW, Ph.D., 



PROFESSOR OF EXPERIMENTAL Am) COMPAEATIVB PSYCHOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. 



THE faculty that determines the direction of one's mental ac- 

 quisitions has been termed " apperception " ; it is equivalent 

 to all that the mind brings with it to perception. Steinthal has 

 made clear the nature and importance of this trait by a variety of 

 clever illustrations. One of these relates to a party of German 

 gentlemen who had traveled together all day, and as they werec 

 about to separate one of their number offered to tell the profession 

 of each of the party if each would write without hesitation an an- 

 swer to the question, " What destroys its own offspring ? " One 

 wrote, " Vital force." " You," said the questioner, " are a biolo- 

 gist." A second answered, " War," and was correctly pronounced 

 a soldier. The philologist revealed his profession by writing " Kro- 

 nos " ; the publicist by writing " Revolution " ; and the farmer by 

 writing " She-bear." Each answered according to his appercept- 

 ive bent. The same thing is illustrated in Don Quixote's seeing a 

 giant in a windmill ; in our seeing a man in the moon ; in the an- 

 cients finding curious animal shapes in the constellations ; in chil- 

 dren's and savages' personification of animals and natural phe- 

 nomena ; in Macbeth's vision of the dagger ; or in the advice of 

 that wise priest who told a maiden consulting him as to her ac- 

 ceptance of a certain suitor, to listen to the church-bells, and if 

 she heard them saying, " Take-him., take-him." her happiness lay 

 in acceptance, while if the bells rang out, " Tcike-Yivai-not , take- 

 him-?io^," no good could come of the union. The issue is left in 

 doubt, but the maiden certainly followed her own mind. Espe- 

 cially when distinct perception is difficult does the subjective 

 element of the process come to the front. In a country walk at 

 night, an imaginative person constantly sees a ghost in what his 

 more prosaic companion recognizes as a whitewashed tree. At a 

 spiritualistic seance, it is well known that enthusiastic believers 

 see whatever they are anxious to see. The general formula which 

 sums up all these illustrations is, that we see with all that we 

 have seen ; we hear with all that we have heard ; we learn with 

 all that we have learned, and so on. Every acquisition and every 

 action, however trivial, leaves a mark on our organization and 

 becomes a causal link in the rest of our lives ; it is in this way 

 that experience leaves its deposit in character. This apperceptive 



* The treatises dealing most fully and ably with the general subject of this article are 

 G. Ballet's " Le langage interieur et les diverses formes de I'aphasie," and V. Egger's " La 

 parole interieure " ; see also S. Strieker's " Sprachvorstellungen," etc. 



