THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS. 107 



•APPERCEPTION".' 



In Germany since Herbart's time Psjchology liasalwaya 

 had a great deal to say about a process called Apperception* 

 The incoming ideas or sensations are said to be ' apper- 

 ceived ' by ' masses ' of ideas already in the mind. It is plain 

 that the process we have been describing as perception is, 

 at this rate, an apperceptive process. So are all recogni- 

 tion, classing, and naming ; and passing beyond these sim- 

 plest suggestions, all farther thoughts about our percepts are 

 apperceptive processes as well. I have myself not used the 

 word apperception because it has carried very difierent mean- 

 ings in the history of philosophy, f and 'psychic reaction,* 

 * interpretation,' * conception,' ' assimilation,' * elaboration,* 

 or simply ' thought,' are perfect synonyms for its Herbartian 

 meaning, widely taken. It is, moreover, hardly worth while 

 to pretend to analyze the so-called apperceptive perform- 

 ances beyond the first or perceptive stage, because their varia- 

 tions and degrees are literally innumerable. ' A2)perception * 

 is a name for the sum-total of the effects of what we have 

 studied as association ; and it is obvious that the things 

 which a given experience will suggest to a man depend on 

 what Mr. Lewes calls his entire psychostatical conditions, 

 his nature and stock of ideas, or, in other words, his charac- 

 ter, habits, memory, education, previous experience, and 

 momentary mood. We gain no insight into what really oc- 

 curs either in the mind or in the brain by calling all these 

 things the * apperceiving mass,' though of course this may 

 upon occasion be convenient. On the whole I am inclined 

 to think Mr. Lewes' s term of * assimilation ' the most fruit- 

 ful one yet used.| 



Professor H. Steinthal has analyzed apperceptive pro- 

 cesses with a sort of detail which is simply burdensome.^ 



* Cf. Herbart, Psychol, als. Wissenschaft, § 125. 



f Compare the historical reviews by K. Lange : Ueber Apperception 

 (Piauen, 1879), pp. 12-14; by Staude in Wundt's Philosophische Studicn, i. 

 149; and by Marty in Vierteljsch. f. wiss. Phil., x. 347 ff. 



X Problems, vol. i. p. 118 ff. 



§ See his Einleitung in die Psychologie u. Sprachwissenschaft (1881 X 

 p. 166 ff. 



