v INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE 69 



experiences of touch, resistance and so forth have from 

 infancy been operating upon me in such a way that the 

 apprehension of a red extended surface is filled out auto- 

 matically with elements that make it into the perception of 

 a wall built of bricks and mortar which I cannot push over 

 or walk through. Logically when I see a little figure run- 

 ning to meet me, and discern it to be my child, I am 

 inferring from a patch of colour quite a fabric of potential 

 conclusions. Psychologically what has happened is that 

 all the meaning that the term c my child ' has for me has got 

 itself incorporated with that vision. The optical sensa- 

 tion is charged with possibilities of meaning, any one of 

 which may be developed into ideas or acts according to the 

 interest of the moment. 



In action the characteristic product of assimilation is 

 Habit. Just as the hereditary structure produces reflex 

 responses to sensory stimuli of a definite type, so assimila- 

 tion produces reactions which are the same for all stimuli of 

 a class. Correlation of this order does not lend itself 

 readily either to correction or to accurate discrimination of 

 essentially different cases, and where we find habits slowly 

 formed and obstinately adhered to we may refer them to 

 Assimilation. The reason is quite intelligible. The pro- 

 cess consists in the modification of the excitement corre- 

 sponding to A by its assimilation of the character of B. 

 This may take many repetitions to render it permanent, 

 and once permanent it is a structural change which similarly 

 requires much effort to undo. For the same reason the 

 modification easily extends itself to a and a, which to the 

 senses resemble A, but have quite different effects, while it 

 fails to affect Ai, which to a superficial view differs from A, 

 but in reality has substantially the same effect. Habit, in 

 short, like the reflex, is of the nature of a structure built up 

 to suit the simple and the normal, and outside that range 

 failing disastrously. 



In the human mind Assimilation is responsible for more 

 than Habit. Past experience operates unconsciously on 

 the highest and most developed as on the most elementary 

 mental products. Our experience in the mass goes to 

 shape our thinking, to suggest one train of thought or 



