vin PRACTICAL JUDGMENT 169 



complex series of actions it is only the massive effect 

 of repeated experience that operates. 



(2) The relations given in experience, and guiding 

 subsequent action, may be relations between any objects 

 of perception, and are not (as in the case of Assimilation) 

 confined to those between sensations and the motor 

 excitements immediately attendant on them. Hence, 

 further 



a. Inferences may be based on a general similarity 



(a similar relation of parts), and not merely on 

 similarity in a distinct sense-quality. 



b. The same content may stand in several distinct 



relations without confusion. In the case of 

 Assimilation (and Association) one content leads 

 uniformly to one other. 



(3) The results of experience are applied to action in 

 a manner not determined by the experience itself. In the 

 case of Assimilation, the application of experience is not 

 distinct from its acquisition, the formation of a habit 

 being the formation of a tendency to act. 



Thus, what is effected in this stage is a correlation 

 between complexes which themselves involve related 

 elements, i.e., between articulate complexes. On the 

 one side we have data perceived as distinct but related, 

 on the other means adopted in relation to distinct ends : 

 the correlation consisting in the process by which the 

 one complex gives rise to the other. Both complexes 

 belong to the perceptual order. 1 



It will be seen that the unit of this process from first to 

 last is the complex of related terms whether given in percep- 

 tion or grasped in an idea starting from a perception. In 

 this complex the relation is not apprehended in abstraction 

 from the terms, but the terms in their relation constitute 

 an articulate whole. 2 There are three stages in the ex- 



1 The act and its result may not in fact be perceived, but they are 

 particular events in time congruous with those which form the contents 

 of perception, i.e., they are of the perceptual order. 



2 In any articulate perception the relations contained contribute to the 

 character of the whole as much as the elements that are related, and in 

 that sense the relations must be said to be perceived. It does not follow 

 that the character of any of the relations concerned is analysed out and 



