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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 COLLEGE 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 William E. Roberts
 
 APPERCEPTION 
 a flDcmograpb 
 
 ON 
 
 PSYCHOLOGY AND PEDAGOGY 
 
 BY 
 
 DR. KARL LANGE 
 
 DIRECTOR OF THE HIGH EU BUBGHER-SOHOOL, I'LAUEX, GER. 
 
 TRANSLATED AND PRESENTED TO AMERICAN TEACHERS BY THE 
 FOLLOWING-NAMED MEMBERS OF THE HERBART CLUB : 
 
 ELMER E. BROWN, CHARLES DE GARMO, MRS. EUDORA HAILMANN, 
 
 FLORENCE HALL, GEORGE F. JAMES, L. R. KLEMM, OSSIAN 
 
 H. LANG, HERMAN T. LUKENS, CHARLES P. MC MURRY, 
 
 FRANK MC MURRY, THEO. B. NOSS, LEVI L. 
 
 SEELEY, MARGARET K. SMITH. 
 
 EDITED B Y 
 
 CHARLES DE GARMO 
 
 BOSTON, U. S. A. 
 
 D. C. HEATH & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 
 1894
 
 PRINT!!) BV C. H. HEINTZBMANN, BOSTON.
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAET I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE DOCTRINE or APPERCEPTION A PSYCHOLOGICAL IN- 
 VESTIGATION : 
 
 1. Nature and Kinds of Apperception . . . . . 1 
 
 2. Conditions of Apperception . , . .. . . .42 
 
 3. Significance of Apperception in the Spiritual Develop- 
 
 ment of Man . . . . i . .53 
 
 PAET II. 
 
 THE THEORY OP APPERCEPTION IN ITS APPLICATION TO PED- 
 AGOGY 103 
 
 1. The Object that is Apperceived (Choice and Arrange- 
 
 ment of the Subject-matter of Education) . . . 109 
 
 2. The Subject that Apperceives (Investigation, Extension 
 
 and Utilization of the Child's Experience) . . .151 
 
 3. The Adequate Union of these two Factors in Instruc- 
 
 tion (Methods of Instruction) 200 
 
 PABT III. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE TERM APPERCEPTION. 
 
 1. Leibnitz 246 
 
 2. Kant 250 
 
 3. Herbart 255 
 
 4. Lazarus , 263 
 
 5. Steinthal 268 
 
 G. Non-Herbartian Psychologists 272 
 
 7. Wundt 275 
 
 iii
 
 B F~ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SANTA BARBARA COLLEGE LIBRARY 
 
 U3 
 
 69036 
 
 EDITOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 IF we inquire into the genesis of our present educational 
 ideals, we shall find that they take their rise in the hearts of 
 a few great men. Comenius, Rousseau, and Pestalozzi, to 
 whom much that is excellent in our American schools to-day 
 can be traced, were men who wrote and taught because they 
 saw a great need, because their intense emotional natures 
 were stirred to the depths at the sight of children growing 
 up in ignorance or wasting the precious time of youth in 
 empty verbalism. Like all great reformers, they were 
 governed more by their feelings and instincts than by the 
 scientific spirit, which analyzes everything, never taking a 
 step not warranted by logical deduction. Logic is too cold 
 and slow for a man whose heart is on fire with some plan 
 for the regeneration of society. The initial impulses of our 
 educational advance have been given by men of this type. 
 Usually they have cared but little, even in the later years of 
 their activity, for putting their ideas into scientific form. 
 Where they have done so, however, it is evident that they 
 have merely adopted the primitive psychological conceptions 
 current among the people. Early attempts to reduce these 
 psychological notions to a system led to the theory of dis- 
 parate or independent " faculties," out of which at a later
 
 VI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 period phrenology naturally grew. Antiquated as these 
 crude psychological notions may seem to us, they have 
 nevertheless left a deep, persistent impression upon our 
 whole system of educational ideas. They are doubtless 
 responsible for our faith in what we call formal culture, 
 or discipline of the mind, through studies largely lacking 
 in knowledge content ; to them must be ascribed the dis- 
 tinction between forming and informing studies ; also 
 the attempts to train these so-called " faculties," like per- 
 ception, memory, imagination, reason, will, by means of 
 specific subject-matter and methods of instruction. Doubt- 
 less even so primitive a system has done good service, for 
 any psychology of education is better than none. 
 
 But it now seems evident that if we are to make further 
 progress in education we must add to this initial impulse 
 (for which the world can never be too grateful) something 
 of the scientific spirit of the age in which we live. A num- 
 ber of facts point to this conclusion. In the first place, the 
 curriculum of studies is no longer the simple thing it was 
 in Pestalozzi's time. Study after study has been added in 
 obedience to some popular demand or because of the eso- 
 teric interest of the schoolmaster. What now constitutes 
 our curriculum is a chaos of isolated subjects, which are 
 allowed, not from any demonstrated psychological need, but 
 because of some popular or professional demand. The 
 only proper way to determine which shall be eliminated, 
 which abridged, is to submit the whole to a thorough in- 
 vestigation according to the well developed psychology of
 
 INTRODUCTION. Vll 
 
 the present time, since the primitive systems are wholly 
 inadequate to the task. Such an investigation will neces- 
 sarily take into consideration the educational value of each 
 subject, when it has received the best possible coordination 
 with other branches ; it will consider the natural interests of 
 the child, his power of comprehension, the effect of his 
 present acquirements, disposition and leading purposes upon 
 his acquisition of new knowledge, for all of these things 
 will help to decide how the curriculum shall be made up. 
 This is a problem not to be solved by efforts aroused merely 
 by emotion or instinct, for the problem is essentially scien- 
 tific in its nature. 
 
 We meet this same need for the scientific application of 
 psychology to education in another direction. As long as 
 only the well-to-do classes were educated, there were many 
 influences to which we could appeal to obtain the desired 
 results. Were the child inclined to evade our instruction 
 in order to follow his own devices, we might appeal to his 
 ambition, to emulation, to pride, to shame, to regard for the 
 reputation of family, and the like ; but when the streets, 
 the mines, the factories, the tenement districts, send their 
 children to school, these indirect means of securing atten- 
 tion to study are mostly futile. We stand face to face with 
 naked ignorance and indifference, and must make our im- 
 pression in a few short years or suffer defeat. We can no 
 longer rely on indirect means for arousing the mind to 
 educational effort, but must contrive to awaken a deep, per- 
 manent and growing interest in the acquisition and posses-
 
 Vlll INTRODUCTION. 
 
 sion of knowledge itself. This is a psychological problem 
 involving the child's acquirements, his natural instincts and 
 interests, the content of the studies, together with an in- 
 vestigation into the time, order, and manner of present- 
 ing them. It appears self-evident, therefore, that to the 
 primal inspiration for the uplifting of humanity, we must 
 now add the intelligent direction of psychological science. 
 
 While our educational leaders were gathering their psy- 
 chological ideas from the fireside, so to speak, philosophy 
 and scientific psychology were being wrought out in the 
 closet. The influence of the scientific spirit upon educa- 
 tional doctrines was consequently but slight. There was, 
 however, one of the leading philosophers, John Frederick 
 Herbart, who, foreseeing the need that education would have 
 of scientific treatment from the standpoint of psychology, 
 devoted much of his time to the elaboration of a rational 
 system of pedagogy. Under the influence of his thought, a 
 vigorous school of educational thinkers has arisen in Ger- 
 many who are known collectively as Herbartians, but who 
 represent within the school somewhat widely varying theo- 
 ries. Among the number, Dr. Lange has perhaps exhib- 
 ited the happiest combination of popular presentation and 
 scientific insight. His book will interest the simplest and 
 instruct the wisest ; for, being on the one side concrete and 
 readable, it is on the other founded on painstaking research, 
 not only in Herbartian, but also in other modern scientific 
 psychology. A prominent merit of Lange is that he shows us 
 the lines along which we must work in order to reach a solu-
 
 INTKODUCTION. IX 
 
 tion of educational problems requiring this new element of 
 psychology scientifically developed. Not only does he point 
 the way, but he pursues it. He leads us into a funda- 
 mental study of the nature, kinds, conditions and signifi- 
 cance of apperception ; he shows what influence it is to have 
 upon the choice and arrangement of the subject-matter of 
 education; how we can investigate, extend, and utilize the 
 child's store of experience, and how to bring about an ade- 
 quate union between the growing mind of the child and the 
 subject-matter of instruction through the development of 
 the best methods of teaching; finally, in the Third Part he 
 gives us a masterly survey of the history of the term as 
 explained by Leibnitz, Kant, Herbart, Lazarus, Steinthal 
 and Wundt. One lays down the book, after reading this 
 chapter, with the reflection, that if these men have not said 
 the last word upon apperception, it is still much to have 
 said the first. 
 
 Believing that this book above all others is best adapted 
 to introduce the young teacher into that realm of educational 
 thought in which the results of modern psychology must 
 henceforth be an indispensable factor, the members of the 
 newly formed Herbart Club collectively offer this translation 
 
 to their fellow teachers. 
 
 CHAKLES DE GABMO. 
 
 SWABTHMOKE COLLEGE, PA., Jan. 1st, 1893.
 
 PART I. 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 
 
 A PSYCHOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION. 
 
 I. NATURE AND KINDS OF APPERCEPTION. 
 
 MAN enters life as a stranger ; he knows nothing of the 
 world that receives him : it is to him a new, unknown 
 country, which he must explore, which he must conquer. 
 How is this to be done? Nature assails his senses with a 
 thousand allurements ; she sends the rays of light that she 
 may open his eyes to the innumerable things of the outer 
 world, she knocks upon the door of the human spirit with 
 excitations of tone and touch and temperature and all the 
 other stimulations of the sensitive nerves, desiring admis- 
 sion. The soul answers these stimuli with sensations, with 
 ideas ; it masters the outer world by perceiving it. 
 
 But this is not brought about by a mere passive reception 
 of outer impressions, as men were once perhaps inclined to 
 think, for the soul is not a tablet upon which the outer 
 world engraves its messages, not a mirror in which things 
 are reflected, and ideas are not mere images of things. 1 On 
 the contrary, in the moment of perception, the mind is 
 
 1 This is a reference to John Locke, who represents the soul as a Tabula 
 Rasa on which experience writes its messages. See Book II., Chap, i., of 
 Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
 
 2 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 thoroughly active, since it transforms a physiological occa- 
 sion into a psychical result : or, in other words, since upon 
 occasion of a nerve-activity it responds with an action whose 
 content is entirely different. "What it is that the outer world 
 effects in the mind, what activity in harmony with its own 
 nature the mind manifests in consequence of a certain sense 
 excitation, can be seen in the sensations that come imme- 
 diately into consciousness. Therefore, strictly speaking, 
 these sensations do not tell us how the things of the outer 
 world really are, but how they appear to us. We think, in- 
 deed, to recognize the true nature of things through our 
 perceptions, because things are the occasion of our percep- 
 tions ; but what we call the qualities and activities of things 
 are only our sensations arising from the nerve excitations 
 caused by these outer objects. 1 
 
 Yet all that we perceive is not the mere appearance ; the 
 outer world is not the bare product of our perception. For, 
 though the mind creates its ideas in consequence of its own 
 nature, it does not do so without corresponding outer stim- 
 ulus. That things are external to us, that they affect 
 us according to certain laws, and occasion in the soul speci- 
 fic reactions corresponding to their qualities, that we can 
 make them serviceable to our wills according to those laws, 
 to all this our perceptions testify beyond a doubt. Yet, 
 for all that, they do not reveal the actual nature of things. 
 Our perceptions through their rich variety teach us to be at 
 
 1 For example : All that a bell does when it rings is to set the air vi- 
 brating. This is not sound as we experience it, but the vibrations come 
 to the ear and stimulate the auditory nerve. This nerve excitation is 
 conducted to the brain, and the mind itself responds in what we call 
 the sensation sound, which must be considered as something quite differ- 
 ent from the vibrations of air set up by the bell. The same relations exist 
 between the vibrations of ether, which the physicist can measure, and 
 the resulting sensation that we call light. [Eu.]
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 3 
 
 home in the world and to master it; " but no created spirit 
 ever penetrates to the heart of nature." 
 
 Thus, in general, we master the outer world through our 
 perceptions, and only through them ; yet in their very na- 
 ture there lies at the same time an important limit for all 
 knowing. Just because the perceiving mind does not pas- 
 sively receive external things or their images, because nothing 
 foreign can press in upon it or be communicated immediately 
 to it, but because it relates itself actively to all outer excita- 
 tions and responds to them in its own way, therefore, in a 
 strict sense, our perceptions have only relative truth and 
 validity. 
 
 This activity of the perceiving mind, however, explains 
 another important fact. It is a well known experience that 
 one and the same object seldom occasions precisely similar 
 perceptions in the minds of different people. Of the same 
 landscape the poet's image would differ greatly from that of 
 the botanist, the painter's from that of the geologist or the 
 farmer, the stranger's from that of him who calls it home. 
 In the same way, one and the same speech is often under- 
 stood in as many different ways as there are hearers. What 
 does not the child see in his toys, the devout mind in the 
 objects of its devotions ! What does not the experienced 
 reader of human nature see in the wrinkles and folds, the 
 wilted and weather-beaten features, of a human face! 
 How much do the gestures, the play of features, the glowing 
 or fading fire of the eye, tell him of the battles and storms 
 of the soul ! And the artist, does he not perceive in a work 
 of art a thousand things that escape the closest attention of 
 the ordinary observer? Has not each of us the sharpest 
 kind of an eye for the objects with which our calling makes 
 us best acquainted ? In the voices of nature the youthful 
 lover of birds, like man in the state of nature, hears the
 
 4 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 emotional and volitional utterances of related beings, while 
 the Malay says of his bamboo forests, from whose branches 
 the wind entices the most manifold tones : ' ' The forest organ 
 plays for each his favorite tune." 
 
 "We see, therefore, that when two persons perceive the 
 same thing their perceptions are not precisely alike. There 
 are as many different ideas of one and the same thing as 
 there are observers. Whence this variation in apprehen- 
 sion, with otherwise similar sense apparatus? Were we in 
 perception chiefly passive, could the things of the outer 
 world impress themselves immediately upon our minds and 
 thus stamp their nature upon it, they would necessarily 
 always leave behind the same ideas, so that a variety of 
 apprehension would be impossible and inexplicable. The 
 fact, however, that every observer contributes something to 
 the sensation, and thus alters and enriches it, speaks unmis- 
 takably for the activity of the mind, which, upon occasion 
 of sense-excitations, must perform the main office and create 
 the perception in accordance with that which occasions it. 
 This fact points to an activity the strength of which depends 
 essentially upon the sum and the kinds of psychical products 
 already present ; for precisely those spiritual elements that 
 accompany the real content of the sensation allow us to con- 
 clude as to the causes to which the perception owes its rapid 
 assimilation as well as its peculiar coloring. The mind 
 apprehends the things of the outer world with the assistance 
 of what it has already experienced, felt, learned, and 
 digested. And so it comes about that with nearly all new 
 perceptions the former content of our minds makes itself 
 felt, so that we become conscious of more than that which 
 the objects themselves furnish us, seeing the latter through- 
 out in the light of similar ideas already present in the mind. 
 
 The process of perception must not therefore be regarded
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 5 
 
 as such a simple matter as superficial observation might 
 seem to indicate. It is not merely becoming conscious of 
 nerve-excitations. 
 
 In order that a sensation may arise, there is, as a rule, a 
 fusion or union of its content with similar ideas and feelings. 
 With the assistance of the latter, the sensation is held in 
 consciousness, elevated into greater clearness, properly re- 
 lated to the remaining fields of thought, and so truly as- 
 similated. 
 
 We call this second act, in distinction from that of sim- 
 ple perception or the reception of a sensation, APPERCEP- 
 TION, or mental assimilation. This is a psychical process 
 which has a validity beyond mere subjective perception, and 
 is of the greatest significance for all knowledge, yes, even 
 for our whole spiritual life. 1 Let us see therefore, the laws 
 according to which this process is completed. 
 
 1 The inquiring mind is likely to ask at this point : Is it possible to 
 have perception without apperception? We may say in general that 
 knowledge is necessary for the assimilation of knowledge, and this is the 
 side of apperception of most importance to us as teachers, but some are 
 curious to know how, according to this, knowledge gets a start. The au- 
 thor has shown at the beginning that a spontaneous activity on the part 
 of the soul in accordance with its own nature must be presupposed in 
 order that we may have any experience at all. In the case of the bell, 
 for instance, the vibrations of the air are contributed by the object, but 
 the mental response that we know as sound comes from the mind itself. 
 In this way it is possible for a knowledge of sounds to start, without there 
 having been any previous experience of sounds to serve as interpreting 
 ideas. We have thus in distinction from the apperception in which 
 knowledge is involved & primary apperception, without which we should 
 never know anything. As a rule, Herbartian writers emphasize the cog- 
 nitive phases of apperception, in which new knowledge is assimilated by 
 the products of our former experience, in the form of knowledge, feelings, 
 purposes, interests, etc., partly because these are the phases of the subject 
 of practical importance to pedagogy, and partly from the implications of 
 the Herbartian system of psychology. A careful study of the historical 
 sketch at the close of the volume will reveal to the reader the attitude of 
 the various thinkers in respect to this topic. [Eo.]
 
 6 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 Suppose we have the rare phenomenon of an eclipse of 
 the sun. Rays of light of varying strength come from the 
 lighted part of the sun's disk, and fall upon the retina of 
 the eye. A physical process arising outside of the body 
 affects at once our nerves of sight. Hereby the peripheral 
 ends of these nerves are stimulated to an activity which 
 is conducted as a nerve-excitation to the central ends of the 
 nerves and there causes a specific change (excitation of 
 the ganglion cells), which is characterized as the release of 
 the nerve-excitement. This is a physiological process, which 
 in time and cause seems bound up with the physical one, but 
 which is in its nature entirely distinguished from it. To these 
 external processes, and conditioned and occasioned by them, 
 is now added a pure inner activity, which seems to have 
 nothing in common either with vibrations of ether or with 
 nerve currents ; it is the reaction of the soul, a sight-sensa- 
 tion. This is the psychical act with which the perception 
 closes. We naturally receive from the continually chang- 
 ing disk a variety of sensations, which, united and related 
 to the same object, give us a picture of the eclipse of the 
 sun ; this is a subjective perception. 1 
 
 Only a new-born infant, in so far as it may be supposed 
 to see at all, could stop at this stage in the perception of 
 the outer impression. During the first months of life a 
 human being would perceive this rare celestial phenomenon 
 with dullness and indifference, and without understanding 
 or interest. He will at this stage have nothing to add to 
 the given impression ; he will indeed not be aware of all 
 that is to be seen, so that he can take away no particularly 
 
 1 A perception in this sense of the term does not differ from a sensation, 
 except perhaps in complexity. We usually regard the sensation as tho 
 simplest psychical reaction against the nerve-current caused by a phys- 
 ical stimulus. [ED.]
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 7 
 
 clear and sharp image of the object. Where the soul has 
 gained but little content, it perceives only "according to its 
 original nature," that is, dimly and weakly. 
 
 It is very different with the adult. He gains from the 
 same phenomenon of nature a far richer, sharper, and 
 clearer perception. We notice not only the gradual eclipse 
 of the sun, but we recognize also its cause. We see a dark 
 disk enter the sun's field of light, and say to ourselves that 
 this is the unillumiuated side of the moon, which in its 
 passage around the earth, is now passing between us and 
 the sun, and whose cone of shadow hides from us the star of 
 day. To this we add the comforting certainty, that all this 
 has to do with right things, that the eclipse is proceeding 
 according to known and fixed laws a thought that goes 
 far to remove a large part of the emotion-stirring power of 
 this unusual occurrence. . 
 
 Whence comes this perception, so rich in content and clear 
 in outline? It has evidently arisen under the influence of 
 the related thought content, with which we have met the 
 outer impressions, and under the influence of the observa- 
 tions and knowledge that we have formerly gained through 
 instruction, reading, and personal observation of the heavenly 
 bodies and their movements. It was with the help of what 
 we already knew of this keenly expected natural event, and 
 of similar reproduced ideas, that we created this new percep- 
 tion and placed it in an orderly position in the organism of our 
 knowledge, so that it now forms a clear and definite part 
 of the same. WE APPERCEIVED IT. Not unessential is the 
 service rendered by the will, which is here led by intellectual 
 feelings. As we were viewing the astronomical event with 
 close attention, it not only correctly adjusted the sense 
 organs for the observation, but it removed disturbing ideas 
 as far as possible from consciousness and admitted only such
 
 8 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 as were favorable for the assimilation of the new. This was 
 accompanied by a corresponding physical effort, viz., that of 
 tension, which made itself felt in the sensation. At the 
 moment of successful apperception, as would appear from 
 Wundt's investigations, the sensory nerve-current was trans- 
 ferred from the central ends of the nerves to a region lying in 
 the front part of the large brain, which is reckoned to be the 
 apperception center. From here the excitation was partly 
 directed back to the sensory centers, whereby there was a 
 strengthening of the perception, and partly conducted further 
 to the muscles of the eye, in which certain feelings of ten- 
 sion arose. 
 
 Reviewing now the parts of the process to be observed in 
 the act of perception, we find an extraordinary number of 
 them : sense and motor stimuli, sensations of sight and mus- 
 cles, reproduced ideas, .activities of feeling and will all 
 these are exercised in the production of an apparently simple 
 result without our being conscious of all the actions simulta- 
 neously. There are, however, two chief activities to be dis- 
 tinguished in the whole process. We perceive in the eclipse, 
 first, just what the original constitution of our minds neces- 
 sitates, even if they were no more developed than the mind 
 of the infant. In this way a PERCEPTION arises. But through 
 the ideas and skill obtained by former experience, we observe 
 much that remains hidden to the inexperienced, and we add 
 to the subjective perception numerous psychical elements 
 from our well-stored minds, which were not immediately given 
 in the observation. The mind apprehends outer impressions 
 in accordance with its wealth of knowledge gained through 
 former activity. THE PROCESS OF PERCEPTION BECOMES ONE 
 
 OF APPERCEPTION. 
 
 The fact that the act of apperception is accomplished 
 under the influence of the present knowledge store of the
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 9 
 
 mind, makes it comprehensible how one and the same 
 natural event can find such different interpretations. What 
 we observe with such quiet self-possession, and even ele- 
 vation of feeling, has always been a cause of horror and 
 powerful fear with savages and other primitive peoples. 
 They see the sun threatened by demons who would rob it of 
 light, by dangerous monsters who would devour it. These 
 ideas are perhaps most immediate to those whose existence 
 is filled with unceasing struggle against hostile neighbors 
 and powerful beasts of prey. And therefore, because the 
 eclipse appears to them as a gigantic war of worlds, as a fatal 
 event, threatening to destroy even themselves, it is natural 
 that their minds should be moved by the most powerful emo- 
 tions. When, however, the idea of the heavenly bodies and 
 their ceaseless change has gained a fixed place and meaning 
 in the religious system of a people, when the sun is adored as 
 a sublime God of Light, who rules the world and the fate of 
 man, then this celestial phenomenon must, in accordance 
 with ruling ideas, be apperceived as a religious event. 
 Once when the Medes and Lydians stood opposed, ready to 
 fight a bloody battle, the heavens suddenly darkened and 
 the sun lost its light. Then they recognized that their 
 gods, Ormuzd and Mithras, were angry at their deeds ; 
 they thereupon lowered their weapons, and concluded a peace 
 with each other. 
 
 In the case of the observation described, we saw that the 
 acts of perception and apperception, however clearly to be 
 distinguished according to their nature, were not completed 
 in different times, as if the second, perhaps, followed the first 
 in noticeable time-distinction. On the contrary the act of 
 perception occurred simultaneously with that of apperception 
 and essentially under its influence. The question arises 
 whether this is always so, whether apperception always ac-
 
 10 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 companies perception. We will test the question with a 
 further example. 
 
 In the theater at Corinth the assembled multitudes listened 
 to the first drama that had been played before them. What 
 the furies, the dreadful spirits of revenge, had revealed in 
 terrible song and dance had moved all hearts, and a sol- 
 emn, secret dread rested upon every mind. Suddenly in 
 the midst of the deep stillness, there rang out the words : 
 
 See there ! see there ! Timotheus, 
 The Cranes, the Cranes of Ibycus! 1 
 
 Had these words been uttered at another place and before 
 people who knew nothing of Ibycus and his sad fate, it is 
 probable that they would have passed quickly out of con- 
 sciousness without leaving any deep impression behind. 
 The people could have made nothing out of the strange cry, 
 and would have paid as little attention to the two men as to 
 the passing cranes. The impression, like many other fleet- 
 ing, indifferent ones, would have remained as something 
 isolated and external, a mere perception easy to be forgot- 
 ten. But it was otherwise in the theater at Corinth with 
 the assembled people. Here, the name of the lamented 
 singer fixed the attention upon the few, and in themselves 
 innocent, words of the murderer, so that they did not pass 
 by unheeded. Here, the unwary exclamation found a 
 loud echo in the hearts of the hearers. True, they are at 
 
 1 The story of the Cranes of Ibycus is as follows : While traveling in the 
 neighborhood of Corinth, the poet Ibycus was waylaid and mortally 
 wounded by robbers. As he lay dying on the ground he saw a flock of 
 cranes flying overhead, and called upon them to avenge his death. The 
 murderers betook themselves to Corinth, and soon after, while sitting in ' 
 the theater, saw the cranes hovering above. One of them either in alarm 
 or jest, ejaculated : " Behold the avengers of Ibycus," and gave the clue to 
 the detection of the crime. The phrase, The Cranes of Ibycus, passed into 
 a proverb among the Greeks. Ency. JJrit.
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 11 
 
 first led only by an obscure feeling, a premonition. They 
 do not yet know what these words signify. What should 
 these two strangers have to do with Ibycus ; they, the 
 rough men, with the cultured poet? How does it happen 
 they speak of his cranes? Such and similar thoughts 
 prevent the immediate comprehension of the unusual words. 
 Hence the poet with his psychological tact allows a few 
 moments to pass, before the hearers understand. At first 
 the flock of passing cranes claim the senses of the observers. 
 Then the words about the Cranes of Ibycus are carried 
 even if very soon in wide circles to the lowest seats, and 
 awaken anew the old song. And now the excited multitude 
 breaks out in queries and suspicions : " Ibycus, whom we 
 bemoan? The man slain by the hand of a murderer? 
 "What ails this man? What can he mean? What is the 
 meaning of this flight of cranes ? >n 
 
 Numerous ideas are now called up by the new perception 
 and placed in relation to it. All the thoughts are collected, 
 that is, those which can serve to give significance and exten- 
 sion to the perception. And in fact, of all the ideas called 
 to consciousness, two groups soon appear that are able to 
 contribute to an understanding of the obscure fact of the 
 observation. They are, first, vivid ideas of the ruthless 
 murder of the poet, united with feelings of deep sorrow 
 and moral indignation, accompanied by the desire to find 
 the murderer, and the resolution to attend to every suspi- 
 cious circumstance. Awakened from its light slumber by the 
 name of the murdered man, this group of ideas breaks forth 
 with new power and lends the attentive will a special en- 
 
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 12 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 ergy and endurance. In the second place, all the earnest 
 thoughts and feelings spring up, which the song of the 
 spirits of revenge has awakened in the hearers : the fixed 
 certainty that nothing evil remains undiscovered and una- 
 venged, the feeling of solemn awe before the just, almighty, 
 and omnipresent rule of the gods. Hence arises the 
 thought : What if the gods in confirmation of the message 
 of the furies have produced the murderer ? What if he has 
 involuntarily betrayed himself through thinking aloud? 
 Strange indeed are the ways of celestials. Why should 
 they, indeed, not employ cranes for the discovery of the 
 murderer? 
 
 '.' Now with the speed of lightning there flies through all 
 hearts the warning thought : Attend ! This is the power of 
 the furies! They avenge the murdered poet! The mur- 
 derer reveals himself ! " 1 
 
 The murderers are seized, they grow pale and can give 
 no satisfactory explanation, so that men read their wicked 
 deed in their unsteady looks and distorted features ; that 
 single thoughtless exclamation has become the proof of 
 their guilt. Apperception rapidly accompanies the percep- 
 tion of the outer events, which close with the confession of 
 the evil doers. 
 
 Evidently in the present case perception and appercep- 
 tion are not completed simultaneously, but the mental as- 
 similation follows after an appreciable time. One may, in- 
 deed, ascribe to apperception the apprehension of the sounds 
 uttered by the murderer as words and sentences, in so far 
 
 1 Unb afjncnb fliegt'S tnit 
 
 Turd) alle $erjcn : (Scbct ad)t ! 
 
 Dttft tjl ber gumeniben SHaifct ! 
 
 $er fromme Tidjter roirb (jerodjen, 
 
 Xer 2Jl6rbr bietct jelbft ftdj bar. SCHILLER.
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 13 
 
 as the observers recognize these as familiar sounds and 
 words representing ideas of certain things, and in so far 
 as they have united these mental prbducts into a judgment. 
 However, this apprehension is so meager and indefinite, so 
 external and isolated, that, in comparison with the later 
 deeper comprehension, they may well be termed perceptions. 
 At any rate they are further apperceived by the aid of pres- 
 ent ideas, and only after this is done do they attain the 
 proper content and adequate clearness. There may conse- 
 quently be perceptions that are not immediately assimilated ; 
 not every perception is at the same time an apperception in 
 the cognitive sense of the term. Desultory talk sleeps in 
 deaf ears. The young retain many a word, many a sen- 
 tence purely mechanically, without understanding. It may 
 be years after, that the meaning of a form of speech occurs 
 to us. Then we recognize and understand a perception that 
 to our childish mind appeared a sphinx's riddle. And even 
 to the adult, there come occasionally words and sentences, 
 perceptions, or thoughts so strange and rare, that he knows 
 not at first what to make of them, and catches himself, per- 
 haps, asking with curiosity, what sense or significance these 
 new things may contain for him. 1 
 
 We undoubtedly have perceptions that are never apper- 
 ceived. In this list we shall find the earliest, isolated sensa- 
 tions of the child ; those perceptions that we do not know 
 what to do with ; and such as on account of flagging atten- 
 
 i Lotze in his Psychology narrates the following interesting occurrence : 
 An observer had tried the effect of a narcotic upon himself, for scientific 
 purposes. When he awoke from his stupor, he recognized the persons 
 present in the room, but knew not what to make of himself. Only after 
 his glance had rested on the mirror opposite did he recognize himself. 
 Only at this point, in the first instant of recognition, did perception be- 
 come apperception.
 
 14 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 lion or of transient character sink rapidly under the threshold 
 of consciousness. 1 Yet these form only the exceptions. 
 
 In most cases the more surely, the richer the mental life 
 is perception is accompanied by apperception. Whether 
 immediately or after a shorter or longer period of time, de- 
 pends essentially upon the kind and intensity of the repro- 
 duced ideas that come into relation to the perception. If we 
 repeat a perception often experienced, as when, for example, 
 we recognize a friend, a street, a tree ; identify a sound or 
 the tone of a voice as well known, or read what is written or 
 printed, then the. perception fuses at once with the nearly 
 identical or very similar ideas that meet it in consciousness. 
 Apperception moves here in known and easy roads, sup- 
 ported by established functional disposition of the nerves 
 of sense. Even where a new perception enters and is 
 recognized as belonging to known conceptions and catego- 
 ries, as when a botanist at the first glance classifies a plant 
 seen for the first time, or a judge classifies a punishable 
 offence under a certain paragraph of the law, the process of 
 apperception goes on lightly and without delay. It proceeds 
 most rapidly when the new idea does not need to recall 
 similar old ideas, but when these already stand high and 
 clear in consciousness as ruling ideas. 2 Apperceiving notions 
 
 1 This is supported by a citation from Jean Paul Richter : " Goethe 
 apprehends everything upon a journey ; I nothing at all. With me every- 
 thing dissolves like a dream. I travel through cities without seeing any- 
 thing ; I am stirred only by beautiful regions. I know and see indeed all the 
 particulars of life ; but I inquire nothing about them and forget them." 
 
 1 To the lad who, with ghost-stories in his head and fear in his heart, 
 hastens homeward over the barren moorland at night, the harmless occur- 
 rences about him become in a trice the most terrifying specters. [This 
 suggests the story of Ichabod Crane, by Irving.] In the rustling leaves he 
 hears the "graveyard ghost "; the rattling of the reeds is the " unholy 
 spinner " ; in the gurgle of the water at his feet he hears the melody of 
 the "false fiddler"; before him he MM dearly " the unhappy woman/' 
 lamenting over her poor lost soul ; and shuddering he hurries homeward.
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 15 
 
 stand here, as Lazarus remarks, "like armed men in the 
 strongholds of consciousness ready to hurl themselves upon 
 everything that appears at the portals of the senses, overcom- 
 ing and making it serviceable to themselves." 1 In all these 
 cases we are hardly conscious of apperception as a specific 
 activity. We ascribe to the object of perception what has 
 been added to it by our own minds. We think we merely 
 perceive, when we have already assimilated. Only in excep- 
 tional cases (as where we recognize beloved friends) is this 
 sort of apperception attended by any excitement of strong 
 feeling. Apperception' seems to proceed of itself, without 
 our express will, and not seldom even against our will. 
 It may therefore be regarded as PASSIVE apperception : not, 
 however, in the sense that the soul is passive, for it is 
 active throughout. This characterization, borrowed from 
 Wundt, merely indicates that the process of apperception 
 in this case follows the laws of psychical mechanism, and 
 is not determined by free-working causes, as, for example, 
 our will. 
 
 It is otherwise, however, where a new perception, on 
 account of its content, awakens vigorous feeling, but cannot 
 at once be related to its most appropriate group of ideas. 
 It contradicts, it may be, all known experience so flatly, 
 comes so unexpectedly and so strangely, that we can not 
 relate it to what we know. The new, therefore, does not 
 find its way into our understanding, it remains outside we 
 cannot grasp it. A certain unrest, an oppressive feeling of 
 discomfort possesses us : we know not what to do with 
 the unusual experience, what to say, what to think. The 
 wonder, the astonishment at the incredible phenomenon may 
 under some circumstances increase to violent emotion : we 
 
 1 TJieory of Sense Illusions, p. 14 (Zur Lehre von den Sinnestiiuschunyen').
 
 16 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 " lose our heads," our presence of mind, and stand helpless 
 before the impression, or respond to it with strange or un- 
 usual manifestations of will. 1 The new perception, there- 
 fore, at first produces a check or arrest, a struggle in con- 
 sciousness ; it stirs up thoughts and feelings which dissolve 
 and supplant one another in rapid succession, and thus place 
 the mind in a tense and restless condition. The momentary 
 state of the mind is expressed in the acknowledgment : "I 
 do not understand it (the new) ; it is incomprehensible to 
 me." 
 
 If, during this time, the new perception appears to be the 
 only fixed point in all the changing inner states, the natural 
 question arises : What gives it power, in spite of all oppo- 
 sition, to maintain its place in consciousness? Of course its 
 strength rests first of all in the continually active sense 
 stimulus : what enters through the door of the senses usually 
 proves to be stronger for the time being than the iutensest 
 reproductions that come to meet it. Soon, however, an- 
 other factor makes itself felt. We remember that the per- 
 ception called forth lively feelings. These as messengers 
 of insight dimly indicate the real and subjective meaning 
 or worth of the new perception for the remaining content 
 of the mind. Before every acquisition of knowledge there 
 hastens a feeling that gives premonition rather than insight, 
 which indicates perhaps the direction in which the truth is 
 
 1 This once happened to Livingston's faithful servant who wished to 
 accompany the former on his journey from South Africa to Europe. " In 
 his African home he had never become acquainted with any sheet of 
 water that could at all be compared to that of the ocean. When lie saw 
 nothing but water round about him, saw the high ship gliding over the 
 waves, he could not master the new and powerful impression, and, losing 
 his presence of mind, dashed into the depths of the sea, never to rise 
 again." OLAWSKY, The Idea in the Mind of Man, p. 71 (Die Vorttelluny 
 im Geitte des Menschen).
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 17 
 
 to be found, but reveals nothing of the desired clearness 
 and certainty of knowledge. 1 With the assistance of un- 
 conscious spiritual elements standing near the threshold of 
 consciousness we feel dimly what relations exist between 
 the new perception and our former experience, whether 
 the new wholly or partly contradicts the old in form or 
 content. We recognize in the feeling, further, whether or 
 not to expect that our inner life is to experience promo- 
 tion or retardation on the part of the new perception. Not 
 only are we dimly conscious of what it is in itself, but also 
 in particular what it signifies for us, what it contributes to 
 the elevation or depression of our mental life. Its relation 
 to the self is instinctively grasped. Such feelings are well 
 calculated to awaken a vigorous volitional effort on behalf 
 of the perception. These feelings give to the perception an 
 appreciable worth as motive for the will. It is the will that 
 holds fast the perception on account of the feelings united 
 with it, and prevents its sinking into unconsciousness. This 
 happens, furthermore, through the assistance of related 
 ideas ; for the will is active amid the variegated flow of 
 ideas and feelings, arresting those out of relation to the 
 new, and bringing forward those that are similar. By thus, 
 in a certain sense, establishing order among the offered re- 
 productions, the groups of ideas most favorable to the per- 
 ception with respect to their content and emotional tone 
 may appear and unfold. Now begins the careful com- 
 parison of the new with the old, a weighing of the reasons 
 for the union of the former with this or that line of thought 
 
 we reflect; form judgments, conclusions ; resolve contra- 
 
 i " A remarkable feeling of truth or falsity precedes every demon- 
 stration that reveals the one or the other, just as the feeling of the sub- 
 tlest aesthetic lack or charm precedes the critical developments of either." 
 
 JEAN PAUL RICHTKR.
 
 18 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 dictions, and form new combinations. We test all ideas 
 lying close to consciousness to see which of them may most 
 appropriately be united to the perception, or require a pre- 
 vious transformation we " collect our thoughts." Wlu'ii 
 such a group of ideas is found, when it occupies the 
 center of consciousness, together with its associated feelings 
 and strivings, then all opposing ideas are sufficiently rept-llfl 
 so that the perception may fuse with it into a single pro- 
 duct. The perception now becomes a new and related mem- 
 ber of the old group, so that it is no longer isolated, but 
 takes its place within a greater, well-arranged and firmly 
 grounded order of thought ; with the help of the latter it is 
 assimilated, apperceived. 
 
 Instead of doubt and uncertainty, we have the conscious- 
 ness of acquired knowledge. We are no longer confronted 
 with a strange, puzzling perception, but recognize in it 
 something long known or at least intelligible ; now we see 
 the new with other eyes, with the inner eye of understand- 
 ing, of apperception. At the same time the feeling of dis- 
 comfort that accompanied the reflection gives place to a 
 feeling of enrichment and furthering of mental life. The 
 overcoming of certain difficulties, the accession of numerous 
 ideas, the success of the act of knowledge or recognition, 
 the greater clearness that the ideas have gained, awaken a 
 feeling of pleasure. We become conscious of growth 
 in our knowledge and power of understanding, the success- 
 ful mastery over an unusual perception, which at first 
 threatened to surpass our comprehension, or maintain it- 
 self as an isolated fact. The significance of this new im- 
 pression for our ego is now more strongly felt than at the 
 beginning or during the course of the process. To this 
 pleasurable feeling is easily added the effort, at favorable 
 opportunity, to reproduce the product of the apperception,
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 19 
 
 to supplement and deepen it, to unite it to other ideas, and 
 thus further to extend certain chains of thought. The summit 
 or the sum of these states of mind we happily express with 
 the word INTEREST. For in reality the feeling of self ap- 
 pears between the various stages of the process of apper- 
 ception (inter esse) ; with one's whole soul does one con- 
 template the object of attention. If we regard the acquired 
 knowledge as the OBJECTIVE result of apperception, inter- 
 est must be regarded as its SUBJECTIVE result. 
 
 Here we have a kind of apperception that is sharply 
 distinguished from the passive kind discussed above. 
 There, we saw perception and apperception enter simultane- 
 ously or in rapid succession ; here, the two mental processes 
 are separated by an appreciable time. There, perception 
 and assimilation were completed involuntarily, almost un- 
 noted and without exertion of power. Here, the more 
 difficult the reflection, and the longer the thoughtful, linger- 
 ing contemplation of the idea, the more conscious of 
 the apperception do we become. There, the activity of ap- 
 perception . follows essentially the laws of the psychical 
 mechanism. Here, on the contrary, fi'eely working causes 
 assert themselves in the train of thought. In feeling, the 
 value of the perception for the ego, its significance for the 
 remaining life of ideas and emotions, is well known. The 
 will, determined by feelings of a sensuous, intellectual, res- 
 thetic, or moral nature, appears as a guiding and regulating 
 force whose energetic activity comes into consciousness in 
 strong sensations of innervation. It is the active appercep- 
 tion that we now become acquainted with. The oftener the 
 same active apperception is repeated, the more easily does it 
 take place ; the less expenditure of strength will it lay claim 
 to. The product of the process of thinking whose accom- 
 plishment requires at first much time, and a significant
 
 20 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 degree of strength, becomes gradually condensed into notions 
 and general judgments, the apperceiving force of which be- 
 comes of more and more value, and considerably abridges 
 deliberation. In this way many phases of apperception are 
 established, which, originally active in character, are now 
 hardly to be distinguished from passive apperception. 
 
 According to our previous discussion, it appears as an 
 essential characteristic of apperception, that a new isolated 
 perception blends with an old related group of ideas, i.e., 
 that it is inserted into a larger and well-articulated mass of 
 thought. This is not to be understood in the sense that 
 every apperceived idea is localized at once, and united 
 with a definite group of ideas with which alone it may be 
 reproduced ; rather, that one and the same perception may be 
 apperceived by the help of different groups of ideas, and 
 may, therefore, upon a different occasion, return into con- 
 sciousness as a member of any one of those different groups. 1 
 
 1 For example, why do we after the lapse of some time need to read an 
 article of our own composition through again before it is finally disposed 
 of, and why does it then, to our surprise, often make an impression quite 
 different from that which we had when first writing it? Because now 
 other trains of thought come to meet it which, during the composition, 
 were kept out of consciousness; because we judge more freely and 
 impartially the work that has become in a measure, strange to us. For 
 this reason, it is a well-tried rule of life in all those cases where duty does 
 not bid otherwise, not to apperceive at once, thus coming to a hasty 
 decision upon all new, unexpected, and important facts of experience ; 
 but rather to give the startled mind time to collect its thought, to " sleep 
 upon " the matter, to deliberate upon it a second time. That which 
 seems to-day intolerable, incompatible with one's honor and happiness, 
 will perhaps be regarded to-morrow with quite other eyes; i. e-, apper- 
 ceiving ideas are found which attach to the new quite another and 
 hitherto undreamed-of significance. This is expressed in Eichendorf's 
 
 " Morgengebet " : 
 
 " I am to-day aa born anew, 
 Sadness and pain have taken fliplit, 
 Caret that o'erwhelmed in evening view 
 
 Give rim- to dun i ! by morning light." 
 
 Just because the apperception of one and the same fact may quickly
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 21 
 
 Therefore to say that a perception is united with other 
 psychical products, only means that it is thought in close 
 connection with them ; and hence, the one regularly repro- 
 duces the other. 
 
 But what results from the appropriation of a perception 
 by an older group of ideas? What do they both gain by 
 this event? Especially, what does the apperceived percep- 
 tion gain? 
 
 Many a weak, obscure and fleeting perception would pass 
 almost unnoticed into obscurity, did not the additional 
 activity of apperception hold it fast in consciousness. 
 This sharpens the senses ; i.e., it gives to the organs of sense 
 a greater degree of energy, so that the watching eye now 
 sees, and the listening ear now hears, that which ordinarily 
 would pass unnoticed. This supporting strength of apper- 
 ception is also of value with strong and distinct perceptions. 
 It directs the attention to such characteristics of the perceived 
 objects as stand out but little, and, therefore, are for the 
 most part overlooked. Again, it sharpens eye and ear so 
 that they observe better and more thoroughly. The events 
 of apperception give to the senses a peculiar keenness, which 
 underlies the skill of the money-changer in detecting a 
 counterfeit among a thousand bank-notes, notwithstanding 
 its deceptive similarity ; of the jeweler who marks the slight- 
 est, apparently imperceptible, flaw in an ornament; of the 
 physicist who perceives distinctly the overtones of a vibrating 
 string. According to this, we see and hear not only with 
 the eye and ear, but quite as much with the help of our pres- 
 ent knowledge, with the apperceiving content of the mind. 
 
 However, apperception does still more. It often enriches 
 
 change, just because the fact may be adjusted to different apperceptive 
 groups of ideas, it is a principle of the man of character not to make 
 important decisions dependent upon passing moods.
 
 22 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 the perceptions with characteristics which are not given at 
 all in the sphere of perception, but which are added on the 
 ground of earlier experiences or as a result of certain judg- 
 ments. Compare the above perception furnished us by an 
 eclipse of the sun, which contained much that could not be 
 seen directly, but which was contributed to the perception 
 by our thinking. In nearly all perceptions such supplemen- 
 tary apperception is active. We meet it in the practised 
 reader of newspaper and romances, who really perceives 
 only certain letters of individual word-pictures, and only a 
 part of the words in each sentence, the rest being added out 
 of the store-house of his own thoughts. We meet it in the 
 geologist, to whom the rock-strata of the interior of the 
 earth, with their impressions of plants and animals, together 
 with their fossil remains, tell of mighty revolutions of nature 
 in the remote past. We find it in every one who recognizes 
 a person at a distance by a few individual characteristics, 
 such as size, movement, clothing, etc. In the portrait of 
 a noted man, we recognize much more than the painter with 
 all his art was able to represent. We view historic land- 
 scapes and places in the light of ideas gained by our stud- 
 ies or other experiences of life. Hence how differently must 
 the eternal Rome have been mirrored in the mind of a vassal 
 of the middle ages, and in the soul of a Luther, a Herder, 
 or a Goethe! And when, on the other hand, we recognize 
 in the physical features of the country a natural explanation 
 for certain historic peculiarities of a people or a race, the 
 supplementary apperception in such a cognition is not 
 of less value. Especially is it of great significance for the 
 forming of space ideas. It has been determined that at 
 first the child perceives only surfaces, and has no notion of 
 the dimension of depth, or thickness. It grasps at every- 
 thing (e.g., the moon), without regard to its distance; all
 
 THE THEOKY OF APPERCEPTION. 23 
 
 objects are at first equally near to it. If it depended upon 
 the visual sensation alone, the child would hardly gain the 
 idea of depth. The sense of touch, however, soon becomes 
 associated with that of sight. The peculiar sensations of 
 touch, inasmuch as they unite with those of sight, teach us 
 to distinguish solid bodies from surfaces, even when the 
 latter are not in our immediate vicinity. How is this possi- 
 ble? How can remote objects which we cannot touch be 
 perceived as solid bodies by us whose eyes perceive only 
 surfaces? This fact seems only explicable with the help of 
 apperception. Experience gradually convinces a man that 
 those objects of the external world that carry to the sense 
 of touch peculiar muscular sensations, such as only a solid 
 body can cause, furnish also to the eye a visual image, 
 which, with regard to the distribution of light and shade, to 
 the greater or less sharpness of outline, etc., is distinguished 
 from corresponding pictures, such as surfaces reveal. 1 
 
 These perceptions, as often as they enter simultaneously 
 into consciousness, unite into a complete idea, into an idea 
 of a solid body. Let it be granted that the same or a simi- 
 lar body is shown at a greater distance from us ; at first it 
 would act only upon the eye, and would reproduce only 
 those elements of the complete idea before mentioned 
 that owe their origin to a visual sensation identical with 
 or similar to the one just completed. These are united, 
 however, with certain muscular sensations which refer to 
 the perception of a solid body, and not of a surface ; conse- 
 quently, these latter will enter consciousness according to 
 the law of simultaneity, and, in connection with that repro- 
 
 1 The exposition of the physiological conditions under which stereo- 
 scopic vision takes place, may be omitted here, where only the phase of 
 apperception is treated that bears upon the origin of the idea of a solid 
 body.
 
 24 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 duced visual sensation, will present a mass of ideas which 
 takes possession of the perception, explains it, and by a new 
 element, the characteristic of third dimension, completes it. 
 Thus arises an assimilation of the new idea by the old, which 
 is expressed in the judgment : That object is also a solid 
 body. A person to whom this apperceptive help is lacking, 
 who like the child in its first weeks and months possesses too 
 few space ideas, will in this case perceive surfaces only, 
 not solid bodies. We may say, therefore, that appercep- 
 tion should complete our space observation. It does this 
 in so many cases that we usually overlook its influence, 
 and believe that we perceive solid bodies directly, whereas 
 apperception with the aid of experience really explains 
 them. 
 
 From the foregoing examples, it follows that, while ap- 
 perception strengthens and holds weak perceptions in con- 
 sciousness, it also extends, adjusts, and completes them, 
 and it aids all these psychical products in securing greater 
 clearness and distinctness. It does this even where the ap- 
 perception would not enrich the perception by a single char- 
 acteristic. For example, if we comprehend an object of ob- 
 servation through a general notion to which it belongs, a 
 new experience through a law to which it is subordinated, 
 the perception gains in clearness by subsumption under the 
 more generalized knowledge. We distinguish then between 
 the essential and the non-essential in it, and the most impor- 
 tant characteristics of the new perception receive a desirable 
 strengthening through the apperceiving notion. Further- 
 more, the activity of the apperceived idea is increased with 
 growing clearness. By its insertion into a large, well- 
 ordered circle of thought accompanied by lively feelings, it 
 enters into outer and inner relations with so many members 
 of this group that a regular reproduction is assured to it. It
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 25 
 
 can fall into oblivion only with these ideas themselves. Be- 
 sides, if it belongs to more than one group of ideas, then it 
 will be favored, not only by frequent reproductions, but at 
 the same time by those having many significations, by which 
 its content will be made clear on the most diverse sides. 
 
 Indeed, there are cases when the reproduction is anything 
 but fundamental, where it directly favors a superficial, fleet- 
 ing apprehension of external objects. Numberless times we 
 go through a well known street and pass imposing buildings 
 without perceiving them better or more distinctly than at 
 first. With the aid of apperception we find our way aright 
 with only a fleeting perception, and so are not under the 
 necessity of observing more keenly or searchingly. We 
 cannot say how many times we have recognized and re- 
 peated the alphabet in our reading, and yet very few among 
 us could copy accurately the large letters of the old English 
 type without special preparation for the work ; through ap- 
 perception we have lost the habit of perceiving those pho- 
 netic sounds other than vaguely and incompletely. Not 
 infrequently it even leads to wrong apprehensions. We 
 imagine that we see before us in bodily form that which we 
 wish or fear. When the boy in Goethe's ballad mistakes 
 a streak of fog on the edge of the meadow for the Erlking, 
 a shining willow for the Erlking's daughter, and in the 
 whistling of the wind hears the alluring, coaxing words of 
 the water-sprite ; when Lessiug's Recha sees in the Knight- 
 Templar an angel sent from Heaven, we are not confronted 
 by erroneous perceptions ; " The senses do not deceive, not 
 because they always judge correctly, but because they do 
 not judge at all." l The illusion is due rather to apperceiv- 
 ing ideas posted at the threshold of consciousness ; for, in- 
 asmuch as they passed themselves off as identical with the 
 
 i See Kant's A nthropology, pp. 33.
 
 26 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 new and entering perception, they assimilated it accordingly 
 and entirely changed it in accordance with their own mean- 
 ing. 
 
 In such cases we cannot affirm that apperception in- 
 creases the objective truth and clearness of the perception. 
 AVe may say, however, that the perceptions through their 
 insertion into other groups of ideas, even though wrong 
 ones, gain in activity and strength. In later reproductions 
 they may easily find the right aid to apperception, which 
 subsequently corrects the defective apprehension and thus 
 raises it to greater clearness. 
 
 Not only the apperceived idea, but also the apperceiving 
 group of ideas, ?'.e., the old reproduced combination, suffers, 
 for the most part, a change in the process of assimilation. 
 The oftener it returns into consciousness, upon the occasion 
 of new perceptions, and undergoes its various changes in their 
 presence, so much stronger and clearer may it become, so 
 much the ofteuer is opportunity offered it to enter into new 
 combinations, and thus to increase its own activity. In ad- 
 dition to this, the new perception finally blending with it in 
 many cases enriches and essentially completes it. The dis- 
 tinct perception gained by observing a solar eclipse adds to 
 the apperceiving ideas new characteristics ; for instance, the 
 appearances of protuberances, of the corona, of certain va- 
 riations of color during the twilight, etc., without which these 
 ideas will not appear again. The apperceiving thoughts and 
 conditions of mind of the listening crowd in the theater at 
 Corinth, through the unexpected, but energetically assimilated 
 perception, received such an extension as was hardly to 
 be expected in its completeness and rapidity. In like manner 
 when the botanist puts a newly discovered plant into a 
 known class, when the judge puts a criminal offense under a 
 definite paragraph of the penal law, these subsuming notions
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 27 
 
 are extended. In this way viz., that of enriching and 
 extending apperceiving groups of ideas gradually change 
 to general images and logical notions ; singular and par- 
 ticular judgments change to laws and rules. While new 
 perceptions thus promote the gradual logical transforma- 
 tion of our thought, they richly repay the assimilating ele- 
 ments the service which the latter have rendered them in 
 the act of apperception. 
 
 If the apperceiving group of ideas have wrong character- 
 istics, then the perception undertakes their correction. This 
 occurs in all cases where a fact that has been observed 
 accurately and attentively, repeatedly obtrudes itself upon 
 us. It occurs when our perception corresponds entirely 
 to the object of sensation, and for this reason develops 
 such strength and clearness that, notwithstanding the 
 presence of notions in consciousness contradictory to it, 
 we are not able to deny its truth. Thus, for example, 
 the child learns from the green seed-capsules of the potato 
 stalk that the potatoes are not the fruit, as he has hitherto 
 supposed, but the root-tubers of that plant. Then by a visit 
 to the zoological garden he learns, to his astonishment, that 
 the otter is not, as he imagined, a water-serpent ; or he 
 corrects his idea of the sea-lion, or of the cray-fish, whose 
 name has hitherto had only too much influence upon his 
 ideas of this animal. 
 
 If the new perception is of such a kind that it corrects not 
 only one or several old ideas, but important, far-reaching 
 lines of thought, then the apperceiving mass of ideas under- 
 goes a change which is equivalent to a complete revolution. 
 Whole groups of thoughts then become roused, freeing 
 themselves from the perception and forming themselves 
 anew. We must give up fixed combinations of ideas 
 that have become dear to us, and must make new asso-
 
 28 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 ciations opposed to our previous notions. The process of 
 assimilation now becomes not so much an addition to learn- 
 ing, as a reconstruction of learning. Naturally such a revo- 
 lution is accompanied by an active exercise of the emotions. 
 A painful unrest takes possession of us. At first, we do 
 not know whether we are sleeping or waking ; to whom we 
 should yield ; and a long time elapses before the material of 
 thought, with its disturbed and broken combinations, gathers 
 around a new centre and finally blends with it. Such ap- 
 perceptions often indicate significant progress in the sphere 
 of art and science. From Archimedes, Columbus, and 
 Copernicus to Galvani, Volta, and the investigators and 
 discoverers of the present day, the history of civilization 
 witnesses how a single new perception, a single swift and 
 happy thought, sometimes overthrows whole systems, and 
 brings the investigating mind farther in a definite sphere of 
 knowledge than the thoughtful work of many centuries has 
 been able to bring it. Where the adjusting, upheaving activity 
 of the new perception is extended, however, into the practical 
 sphere of will and action, to ethical and religious habits of 
 thought which hitherto ruled the soul, and from which pro- 
 ceeded the deepest and strongest feelings, the most numer- 
 ous and the most active efforts, then apperception will often 
 bring about a thorough transformation of the moral dis- 
 position, a new period of the inner life, of which the 
 conversion of Saul, and the awakening of Zinzendorf 1 
 are sufficient examples. 2 
 
 1 The painting of the Crucifixion in the Dusseldorf gallery, with the in- 
 scription ; " This I did for thee ; what hast thou done for me ?" 
 
 * We grant that in weak and characterless natures the change of ethical 
 insight does not necessarily imply as a result the transformation of the 
 will, that in such natures a contradiction between knowing and doing is 
 frequently to be observed. But here the above mentioned presupposition 
 is wanting, viz. : that hitherto an ethical circle of thought has determined
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 29 
 
 If in all these cases the new perception brings about so 
 wide-reaching a change in old habits of thought ; if it is the 
 center of new combinations of ideas, then the question arises 
 whether here the factors of mental assimilation do not 
 change their rdle, whether the perception does not now ap- 
 pear as the apperceiving idea, and whether the old group of 
 thoughts may not be regarded as apperceived. The dominating 
 force with which the new makes itself felt in consciousness, 
 and necessitates the loosening of fixed bands of thought, 
 appears indeed to favor this view. That which, for the 
 moment at least, rules the inner world and is a standard for 
 other observations might very well be considered an apper- 
 ceiving power. 
 
 But however long the new perception stands in the fore- 
 ground of consciousness, however manifold are the correc- 
 tions which the old concepts undergo by it, and however 
 incompatible it may seem to be with the whole range of 
 previous experience, yet ultimately it finds a place where it 
 conies to rest in a group of ideas with which it is able to 
 blend. Moreover, in so-called awakenings and conversions, 
 in profound changes in a man's theoretical or practical 
 views, so many fast-rooted, related notions remain un- 
 touched by the transforming influence of the perception, 
 that the latter, with all the ideas which it has readjusted, may 
 become inserted into the old as a new and valuable member. 
 Where active apperception takes place with such intensity 
 
 and guided all willing and action, that the strongest feelings and efforts 
 have arisen from ethical views and judgments. He who regards the good 
 only as theoretical knowledge, and not as a source of noble inspiration 
 and of vigorous resolution, may change his convictions repeatedly 
 without his disposition being touched thereby. Moreover, we may also 
 mention that a fundamental and lasting change of mind demands, beside 
 the change of insight, also a continuous exercise of will in other 
 directions.
 
 30 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 and to such extent that we become actively conscious of an 
 internal emotional struggle, then the apperceiving subject is 
 never an isolated group of ideas, that, for instance, suggested 
 by the perception, but all related ideas become apperceiv- 
 ingly active, together with their conscious and unconscious 
 members. This is especially true of such ideas as are 
 united to the empirical ego through feelings and efforts. 
 Then let a perception act with as much transforming power 
 as it may in a certain sphere of our knowing and thinking, 
 it will finally, with all its new members, be united as an 
 isolated and hence less powerful group to the old stock of 
 thought now united with the ego in a thousand ways. So 
 much do we stand under the ban of the past that even the most 
 unexpected and important new experiences are not able, under 
 normal conditions, entirely to overturn the structure of a 
 man's thought, but they must be arranged as building-stones, 
 and only as such can they be of any value in it. As the 
 Lord suddenly appeared in heavenly light to Paul on the 
 way to Damascus, and with the mighty, " Saul, Saul, why 
 persecutest thou me ? " startled his conscience, a transforma- 
 tion began to take place in this disciple of the Pharisees 
 greater and more decisive than can easily be conceived. The 
 crucified Savior whom he believed to be dead appears to him 
 in person and convinces him that he lives. And how does 
 he live ! He whom Paul had scorned and reviled as a 
 blasphemer and an evil-doer he reigns in Heaven. Those 
 whom he had hitherto persecuted and tormented as fanatics 
 and apostates, the disciples and followers of Christ, are 
 innocent, pious people, the true Israelites and believers in the 
 Messiah. And in what a light does his own life and struggle 
 now appear to him ! That with which he believed he had 
 done God service was vain error. That in which he had 
 sought the highest glory had yielded him the deepest failure.
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 31 
 
 Now he must hate what he had before loved, and must love 
 and reverence what he had hitherto hated. Truly a whole 
 world of new facts and experiences streams in upon his 
 ethico-religious thoughts and convictions. And how is it 
 with regard to his new experience? Had the new satisfied 
 itself in repressing the hitherto false and contradictory views 
 and struggles in him in order to assert itself as a. new center 
 of thought and experience isolated in consciousness? Or 
 with the help of the new was the whole remaining ethico- 
 religious product of thought and feeling loosened from its re- 
 lations and newly arranged ; in a word, was it newly apper- 
 ceived? We do not believe so. For then the new, because 
 it had entirely broken with the past of Saul, could have dis- 
 played no especial activity and vigor, notwithstanding its 
 richness and its high emotional value. Out of Saul would 
 have developed a converted, contrite, Christian soul, but 
 never the heroic apostle to the heathen, who with the 
 old strength served the new Lord. The comparatively 
 short time in which his conversion took place, the victorious 
 resoluteness and joyousness with which he, after a few days, 
 confessed the Christ and proclaimed him, are proofs that he 
 had comprehended and assimilated the new and important 
 facts with the help of old habits of thought which did not 
 need a transformation, with the help of a mental treasure 
 whose urgent force showed itself effective even in the new 
 sphere of religious life. The pure and stern idea of God 
 that he had obtained from the writings of the old Covenant, 
 the longing for the Messiah, which he shared with all believ- 
 ing Israelites, the honest faithfulness and piety, the staunch, 
 manly will, the zeal for God and his cause, the full, deeply 
 religious, and morally earnest apprehension of life which dis- 
 tinguished him from many others, these were traits of his 
 nature, which were in no respect at variance with the new
 
 32 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 Gospel. Added to this came the more recent startling experi- 
 ences. He had seen the religious courage and the enthusiasm 
 of the disciples, those homely, untaught men ; had looked into 
 the glorified face of the dying Stephen, and he had perhaps 
 carried away with him impressions which, on the long, lonely 
 way to Damascus, had made themselves felt as reproaches 
 and doubts. 1 
 
 Even if he now comprehends rightly the Heavenly mani- 
 festations and turns himself to the Lord, it does not hap- 
 pen so because the new perception has overpowered his 
 whole religious thinking and willing, but on the ground of 
 his previous inner experience, after severe mental conflict, 
 he decides upon a change of view and of will so far as they 
 were erroneous, and upon the insertion of the new experience 
 into the present system of thought, into his whole emotional 
 life. He does not give himself up to the new ideas as a cap- 
 tive without a will, but he has so many ethico-religious con- 
 victions at command that he is able to test the value of the 
 former for his whole ego impartially, and to appropriate them 
 with a free will for he might also have closed his heart to 
 the knowledge of the new. He apperceived the new with 
 the help of ideas and states of mind closely combined with 
 his ego. 2 
 
 1 In support of this view, whose correctness has been disputed from the 
 theological side, we have the fact that Saul understood the words of the 
 Lord in all their importance, while his unprepared companions perceived 
 only a voice and nothing further. Accordingly the fact that Saul apper- 
 ceived the purport of the call, presupposes ideas and states of mind which 
 were favorable to the reception and understanding of the new. Such sus- 
 ceptibility gained through internal struggle might be lacking in his fellow 
 travelers, for which reason they would obtain only a dim perception of the 
 matter. 
 
 1 The foregoing presentation does not claim to have taken up and des- 
 cribed the process designated by theology as inner" regeneration." When 
 we referred to some of the co-operating psychical factors we were fully 
 conscious that the heart of man with its changes and its vicissitudes still
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 33 
 
 Where this does not occur, where new important experi- 
 ences are not joined to the related old ones, but occupy an 
 isolated position alongside and out of relation to them, thus 
 becoming for themselves a power of the mind, then abnor- 
 mal conditions predominate, which may easily give rise to 
 mental disease. As here the failure in apperception may 
 lead to division of the ego 1 ; so there where for the same 
 reason a man must break with his whole past, which has 
 become dear to him, viz. : in the ethico-religious sphere, 
 
 remains for psychologists an unfathomable mystery. Upon the ground 
 of experience, and in the interests of moral freedom, we felt obliged to 
 emphasize one thing, viz. : that the inner conversion is not synonymous 
 with a purely mechanical exchange and displacement of the old by the 
 new man, but that it presents an assimilation of the new facts of experi- 
 ence, a new formation of thought and effort which does not take place 
 suddenly, but gradually. Where the ego decides freely upon the accept- 
 ance of new thoughts and sentiments, there the new never appears uncon- 
 nected nor as apperceiving the old. For the ego of man is the representa- 
 tive of his previous inner experience. To be apprehended by it means to 
 be joined to old fixed ideas and states of mind. 
 
 1 We cite the old captain in Immermann's " Munchausen." He had 
 fought with distinction under the French against the Russians, and after- 
 wards, when everybody was marching against France, he fought in the 
 Prussian service no less bravely against his former companions in arms. 
 When peace came and everything around him was to be adjusted to his 
 feelings to the former French sympathies and to the newly awakened 
 spirit of the Fatherland such a union of opposing inclinations and senti- 
 ments could not succeed with the old soldier: he could not entertain the 
 idea that within the period of a year he should have been a brave French- 
 man and a brave Prussian. The memories of the war with their sympathies 
 and antipathies had, in consequence of the rapid change, encamped sepa- 
 rately side by side, and his rigid though honorable character allowed no 
 reconciliation between them. Finally after a dangerous sickness which 
 made him free, body and soul, to a certain extent, he found equilibrium 
 again. He established military order in his memories. He arranged two 
 rooms, of which one was dedicated to recollections of the Napoleonic victo- 
 ries, the other to the memory of the glorious deeds of the champions of free- 
 dom. He always occupied them by turns according to his dominating 
 political mood. Now he was entirely French and exclusively absorbed 
 in the splendor of the Napoleonic time, and again he was decidedly Prus- 
 sian and a panegyrist of the German uprising.
 
 34 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 it may lead to a weakening of the ego, to a paralyzing of 
 his feeling of selfhood and of his mental energy. 
 
 Under normal conditions, on the contrary, even the strang- 
 est and most exciting perception will finally find its resting 
 place, its apperceiving subject, in fixed habits of thought 
 and feeling. The mental soundness of a man is essentially 
 determined by such a union of the present with the past, 
 by the assimilation of new impressions with old ones. 
 
 Up to the present time our presentation of the process of 
 apperception has been limited to cases where an external 
 perception reaches assimilation. If we recollect now that 
 the latter after the cessation of the external excitation be- 
 comes an idea, which retains all the combinations that have 
 hitherto been entered into, the conjecture arises that an 
 apperception may come to pass even between mere ideas. 
 Indeed, reproduced psychical products as well as percep- 
 tions, internal as well as external perceptions, may be in- 
 wardly assimilated. We have here, then, only a special case 
 of the general process of apperception, to which we must 
 devote a few words. 
 
 Of all the concepts which the soul of man creates, many 
 are so weak and fleeting, many strike so strong and so 
 numerous contradictions, that they either become obscured 
 at once or find no circle of thought which they can join. 
 We do not notice them, or do not know how to make any- 
 tiling out of them ; we are not able to make them agree with 
 the other ideas. In both cases, whether they rest apparently 
 forever below the threshold of consciousness or hold them- 
 selves apart in consciousness, no apperception has taken 
 place. Hence those ideas, not being fully understood, have 
 but a limited value for the mental life ; in case they continued 
 in this condition, they would, finally, be entirely lost. If a 
 group of thoughts nearly related to those weak and isolated
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 35 
 
 ideas rises into consciousness (either spontaneously or medi- 
 ately reproduced) , and with a strength and clearness which 
 maintain it against all opposition ; if by virtue of its mani- 
 fold combinations, which it entered into with the other masses 
 of ideas, it dominates the latter for a time, then there will 
 be a movement among the related thoughts, which till now 
 were not rightly understood. We shall recollect much that 
 seemed to have fallen already into oblivion and much will 
 become distinct and clear that was to us until now a " book 
 with seven seals." The dominating group of ideas illumin- 
 ates the darkness and now we cannot comprehend how such a 
 fact could escape us, how we could not at once understand 
 it or could interpret it wrongly. Light now appears, "the 
 scales fall from our eyes," we see clearly that which was 
 hitherto hidden from us ; the isolated and scattered elements 
 of thought have now found a fixed point with which they 
 can unite, with reference to which they can adjust them- 
 selves ; the apperception is complete. 
 
 How often in the soul of the poet may such thoughts and 
 inner experiences, await the happy hour when a favorable 
 mood grants them the right expression, the artistic form! 
 For poetic creation is more than a clever play of the fancy. 
 Lively, tender, memories out of the poet's own emotional life 
 must come to the help of the poetic fancies, and there must 
 come also that formative force which, as a regulating power, 
 enters into the variegated world of fancy, chooses thoughts 
 and tests their worth; which unites and builds according 
 to a fixed plan ; and which subjects even the creation itself 
 again to criticism, rejecting the unessential disturbing ac- 
 cessories and supplying deficiencies. This formative force of 
 the will, however, is awakened and guided by certain aesthetic 
 ideas and feelings at the root of the artistic conviction and 
 mental bias of man. The latter stand in the background of
 
 36 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 the stage and, themselves invisible, work upon the ideas in 
 the foreground of consciousness so that the latter attain a 
 right meaning and deeper significance in an artistic whole. 
 Hence in the act of poetic creation, habitual ideas and 
 testhetic feeling appear as the apperceiving factor. 
 
 The case is similar with the investigator who seeks to 
 solve a scientific problem. From within arise thoughts of 
 possible solutions, of ways and means to the end; but 
 likewise from within there arises a system of thoroughly 
 assimilated knowledge with which the newly obtained ideas 
 must square themselves, opposing elements being repressed 
 and kindred ones absorbed. Here the apperception proceeds 
 from an acquired fund of knowledge which possesses a pre- 
 dominating activity and, as authenticated and firmly fixed 
 opinion, measures itself with newly arising ideas, thereby 
 either supporting or condemning them. 
 
 Not always, as in the foregoing examples, is the apper- 
 ceived idea the less powerful factor, which adjusts itself 
 according to the content of the combination of ideas already 
 present. On the contrary, it may also upon occasion display 
 such strength that the apperceiving ideas undergo correction 
 and change from it. When the investigator in the sphere of 
 science, in consequence of fortunate combinations of ideas, 
 unexpectedly reaches an hypothesis which throws an entirely 
 new light upon hitherto obscure and unintelligible facts, and 
 teaches him to grasp certain manifestations in another and 
 deeper significance ; when to the jealous man, harmless 
 memories which were to him for a long time indifferent, or 
 perhaps precious, suddenly become accusers of one who is 
 to him dearest upon earth (Othello) ; when his diseased 
 fancy sees treachery everywhere and busily brings ever new 
 material to the fire of his passion, in every such case, active 
 reproduced ideas are present which at first arouse certain
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 37 
 
 lines of thought, in order finally to insert themselves into the 
 related groups, thus giving them a new illumination. Often 
 these notions do not stop at correcting individual observa- 
 tions, but they not seldom break through and transform 
 whole regions of thought. Then there arise in the soul such 
 storms as we have spoken of above, occasioned by overpow- 
 ering sense-perceptions. 
 
 According to the foregoing, there is not the slightest doubt 
 that internal perceptions and reproduced psychical products 
 may be apperceived just as well as external perceptions ; it 
 is not necessary therefore that one of the latter be present. 
 The first form of assimilation has since the time of Her- 
 bart been designated as internal, the second, as external ap- 
 perception. Yet the names chosen are not to be regarded as 
 entirely suitable. Others have remarked in criticism that ap- 
 perception even the external apperception is always the 
 assimilation of an internal condition, and that for this reason 
 there is, strictly speaking, only internal apperception. In that 
 case the expression " internal apperception " or " appercep- 
 tion of the inner perception," favors the erroneous assumption 
 that the second kind of apperception is synonymous with de- 
 signed internal perception, or self -observation. It would 
 seem as if the apperception of an inner state or idea, always 
 includes an act of self -observation. This is, however, by 
 no means the case. 
 
 In apperception as we have hitherto known it, our conscious- 
 ness is directed exclusively to the content of the ideas. We 
 give ourselves up so entirely to the ideas as represented that, 
 under circumstances of this kind, we forget ourselves and 
 our activity. As the soldier in the midst of the confusion 
 of combat is so completely taken captive by external impres- 
 sions that he does not think of his own condition, so the 
 person apperceiviug lives chiefly in the objective world of
 
 38 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 observations and thoughts. He asks concerning the rela- 
 tions existing between them, but not concerning the sub- 
 ject to which they belong, or the activity which creates 
 them. In strong emotion, in states of passion or enthus- 
 iasm, the apperception often gains very unusual, even 
 though very one-sided, results, while the moral self-exam- 
 ination that gives attention to one's own thinking and acting 
 is not present. Thus, for instance, the poet in the moment 
 of happy creation is entirely fettered by the objects of his 
 fancy. The better the apperception succeeds, the farther 
 is he removed from observing himself in his work. Indeed, 
 untimely reflection would hinder the progress of apper- 
 ception. 
 
 On the other hand, if we observe ourselves, our conscious- 
 ness is directed especially to the process of representing, will- 
 ing and feeling. To the consciousness of ideas is associated 
 the consciousness that we produce them. That which has 
 occurred in our minds, or is occurring, becomes the object of a 
 new representation. We have then not merely thoughts and 
 ideas; but, at .the same time, we become conscious of them 
 as of an internal activity, and this activity proceeds from 
 one and the same subject, from the ego. These ideas 
 belong to us. We become conscious of a matter. In that 
 case, the ideas do not stand, as in the case of appercep- 
 tion, as objective images before the soul, but they penetrate 
 deeper within, until they come into close connection with 
 the germ of the self, the ego. In apperception, the atten- 
 tion turns principally to the object of representation ; in self- 
 observation, on the contrary, to the subject of representation. 
 In the one case, we ask whether two psychical products unite 
 with one another; in the other, how this combination took 
 place according to psychical laws, and how our ego-conscious- 
 ness presented itself. And we find, as our own activity
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 39 
 
 becomes the object of observation, that we have judged or 
 willed, thought or felt, imagined or calculated, sought or 
 shunned, or whatever else the inner process may be called. 
 "We recognize this inner activity not only as ours, but we dis- 
 tinguish it also from every other, and thereby give it a definite 
 content. We arrange it then into certain classes of inner 
 events, just as in the apperception already described we 
 arrange the perceptions presented to our senses into certain 
 categories of outer experience. Consequently, self-observa- 
 tion is nothing but apperception, although of a special and 
 higher kind, inasmuch as here the subject of apperception is 
 the ego itself. Indeed we often become conscious, in the 
 other kinds of apperception, of the inner relation in which 
 the object assimilated stands to our ego, of the value which 
 a perception has for our whole inner life. But while here 
 this consciousness manifests itself in obscure feelings, in self- 
 observation during an act of knowledge it becomes incompar- 
 ably clearer. As the process of apperception comes to 
 consciousness chiefly through the feelings of tension accom- 
 panying it, so in many cases a kind of internal perception 
 awakened by those sensations may accompany the mental 
 assimilation, only of course in the form of a feeling or of the 
 general thought, "I think," or "I perceive." As soon, 
 however, as this internal perception assumes a more active 
 character and brings the individual psychical processes 
 into review before the ego, it ceases to accompany the 
 apperception. In this case a second perception follows the 
 first, which was directed to the content of the ideas, and 
 this second perception renders the process of apperception 
 itself an object of observation and assimilation an act of 
 self-observation. It follows apperception, for in reality, as 
 Drobisch rightly says, intentional self-observation is a con- 
 stant failure : " the observation always comes later than the
 
 40 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 occurrence." Our self-observation is for the most part, not 
 an observance of what is now going on, but a contemplation 
 that hastens on, after the event to be observed has gone 
 by, a tarrying with memories. When the process of apper- 
 ception has reached a conclusion in the judgment A=Z, then 
 self-observation apprehends the individual parts of this oc- 
 currence as the peculiar conditions of the active soul, and 
 the apperceived idea as the possession of the ego. This 
 latter recognizes the product of apperception as the idea that 
 is expressed in the judgment: / have A. We, ji.e., our 
 empirical ego, then regard ourselves as the real subject of 
 apperception. We recognize clearly the significance that 
 the new perception has for our mental development. The 
 more vigorous an active apperception is, the more surely 
 does self-observation seem to follow it. This is explained 
 partly upon the ground of the action of the will in the prog- 
 ress of the ideas and feelings, partly on the ground of the 
 lively emotional and bodily excitations that accompany 
 the occurrence. The latter are those which continue after 
 the completed apperception, warning us of the inner events, 
 and making us attentive to them. On the contrary, that 
 which is easily and readily apperceived, or is indifferent to 
 the ego, does not leave a deep impression behind it. It 
 does not excite attention, and hence seldom arouses self-ob- 
 servation. Consqueutly the latter is neither a necessary 
 characteristic nor a regularly accompanying manifestation of 
 apperception. Self-observation frequently goes on obscurely 
 side by side with apperception ; more frequently still, the 
 former follows the latter as a new and higher grade of 
 apperception, or it may be entirely lacking. 
 
 Let us now sum up the essentials in the process of apper- 
 ception. First of all, an external or internal perception, an 
 idea, or idea-complex appears in consciousness, finding more
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 41 
 
 or less response in the mind, i.e., giving rise to a greater or 
 less stimulation to thought and feeling. 1 
 
 In consequence of this, and in accordance with the psy- 
 chical mechanism or an impulse of the will, one or more 
 groups of thoughts arise, which enter into relation with the 
 perception. While the two masses are compared with one an- 
 other, they work upon one another with more or less of a 
 transforming power. New thought-combinations are formed, 
 until, finally, the perception is adjusted to the stronger and 
 older thought combination. In this way all the factors con- 
 cerned gain in value as to knowledge and feeling ; especially, 
 however, does the new idea gain a clearness and activity that 
 it never would have gained for itself. APPERCEPTION is 
 
 THEREFORE THAT PSYCHICAL ACTIVITY BY WHICH INDIVIDUAL 
 PERCEPTIONS, IDEAS, OR IDEA-COMPLEXES ARE BROUGHT INTO 
 RELATION TO OUR PREVIOUS INTELLECTUAL AND EMOTIONAL 
 LIFE, ASSIMILATED WITH IT, AND THUS RAISED TO GREATER 
 CLEARNESS, ACTIVITY AND SIGNIFICANCE. 2 
 
 We are well aware that this explanation does not fully 
 exhaust the nature of apperception. Mental assimilation 
 is indeed an event that unites in itself various elementary 
 processes, and in which factors are acting that elude observa- 
 tion. Without doubt it depends upon an interaction of 
 ideas ; but it is more than this, inasmuch as it also includes 
 the products of thought and feeling arising through the ac- 
 
 1 Yet it also happens that apperceiving ideas enter first, and call up iso- 
 lated ideas for apprehension ; as when, for example, we seek examples 
 for a known rule. 
 
 The derivation of the word apperception (from ad and percipere, to 
 grasp, to perceive) signifies that a new perception is united with another, 
 a new cognition is adjusted in proper order with present psychical pro- 
 ducts. Apperception is (according to Willmann) the " added apprehen- 
 sion, the co-operation of reception and reproduction of mental products," 
 " the perfected apprehension of an idea by means of other reproduced 
 ideas."
 
 42 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 tivity of thinking. Its two principal kinds correspond to 
 involuntary and voluntary attention; it is not, however, 
 merely an energy holding the ideas fast in consciousness, 
 but it embraces also the conditions and results of conscious- 
 ness, the objective knowledge of the inner relations existing 
 between the ideas. Finally, it is always accompanied by a 
 fusion or blending of ideas, an accession of new, isolated 
 elements to older and richer related thought. But it is more 
 than a mere blending, more than a receptive taking-up of new 
 impressions ; it is rather their self-active apprehension and 
 elaboration. It not only includes an increase in theoretical 
 or practical knowledge, but at the same time it signifies an 
 elevation of our feeling and effort, the apprehension of a new 
 psychical product through the emotions. It is the process of 
 growth of the soul ; it is mental development. 
 
 2. CONDITIONS OF APPERCEPTION. 
 
 The result of mental assimilation, the facility or difficulty 
 of process, its strength and power, are first of all dependent 
 upon the nature of the apperceived as well as of the apper- 
 ceiving ideas, upon the elements of thought and feeling 
 accompanying them ; ?.e., upon the existing conditions of 
 mind and heart. While the two latter important factors, hi 
 consequence of their obscure, indefinite character, are little 
 accessible to our observation, the significance of the former 
 for the process of apperception may be more easily recog- 
 nized. Our attention must, therefore, be turned chiefly 
 to them so far as we have to do with the psychical con- 
 ditions of apperception. For the sake of brevity and 
 simplicity, however, it is usual to indicate the apper- 
 ceived and apperceiving groups of ideas, including their 
 accompanying states of mind, as the object and subject of 
 apperception. Yet these expressions must be understood
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 43 
 
 figuratively ; for in reality the thinking, feeling, and willing 
 soul is the subject of apperception, or, in the case of self- 
 observation, the real ego is the subject. The masses of 
 ideas, moving toward one another, are not to be regarded as 
 active, independent existences, but rather as means employed 
 by the soul that knows and wills. 
 
 A perception or idea becomes the object of apperception, 
 if, upon its entrance into consciousness, it finds more or less 
 response ; i.e., if it calls up other ideas, together with the feel- 
 ings and efforts associated with them. Such exciting force, 
 however, is manifested by those ideas that stand in relation 
 to old kindred groups of ideas, or to the ego. That which 
 is entirely strange leaves us cold ; the absolutely new is not 
 understood. That, however, which recalls the known in its 
 form or its content, often attains thereby a high value for 
 the feelings ; attention naturally turns to it. Well-known 
 perceptions are assimilated quickly and without trouble 
 an, act of apperception that is designated recognition. If, 
 on the contrary, the new agrees with Earlier experiences only 
 in part, if it is but partially similar to that which we already 
 know, then the assimilation is for the most part completed 
 but gradually, and we become conscious of it as mental 
 labor. Such apperception includes an act of learning. 
 Wherever we are concerned with the discovery of truth, 
 or the creation of thought products, the present mental store 
 is always confronted by that which is relatively new. 
 
 These related perceptions that form the object of apper- 
 ception should consist neither of weak, wavering ideas hav- 
 ing no power to effect reproduction, nor of such strong, 
 overpowering impressions as of themselves fill the con- 
 sciousness and crowd out all other thoughts. A too rapid, as 
 well as too slow, unfolding of the stages of a perception must 
 also be avoided. The measure of time for such unfolding,
 
 44 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 or development, will have to be adjusted to the greater or 
 less facility with which the movement of ideas takes place 
 in the individual in question. The more we allow time for 
 the various parts of a perception to be taken up carefully, 
 and the more sharply we distinguish them from one another, 
 the more thoroughly is the apperception perfected. 1 
 
 It is because thoroughgoing apperception is added to deep 
 aesthetic feeling, that solemn things so powerfully impress 
 the mind. ' ' And all things of slow movement, if not ad- 
 verse to the idea on other grounds, approach the solemn" 
 (Herbart). So much for the object of apperception. 
 
 Among the ideas awakened by a perception, those which 
 for the time being display the greatest power are called 
 the subject of apperception. The power of these ideas 
 depends first of all upon their intensity and activity. 
 Knowledge which has "flown" to us, which has been 
 drilled into us, which did not arise from our own active 
 experience, is deficient in such force. Book-knowledge is 
 likely to give exhausted, feeble aids to apperception. He 
 who sees only with the eyes of another and not with his 
 own senses, is always lacking in vigorous, active thoughts 
 
 1 In " The Soul's Comfort," a religious book of the middle ages, which 
 contains numerous anecdotes illustrating the Ten Commandments, the 
 Father-confessor asks a woman how many Pater Nosters she says daily. 
 She replies: " When I come to Mass and God gives me grace so that I 
 can say my Pater Noster well, then I say half a Pater Noster, or a fourth 
 part, or a whole Pater Noster; but if I do not succeed well, then I say 
 a dozen or one hundred Pater Nosters." Then she explained how this 
 occurred. When she began the prayer earnestly and reflected upon all 
 the love and faithfulness which her Heavenly Father had hitherto shown 
 her and all men, then she could not easily get beyond the beginning, 
 and would finish a whole Mass with the words: "Our Father." Just 
 so it was with the next words. If she wished to reflect with true fervor 
 upon every part, during a whole service, she could barely repeat the whole 
 once. Only when she had no sincerity did she sometimes say fifty Pater 
 Nosters. But then she did not count her effort successful.
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 45 
 
 that spring forth at the right moment and make themselves 
 felt in the apperceiving process. One may have learned a 
 marvellous amount, and yet in regard to capacity for apper- 
 ceiving be a very stupid fellow. We ourselves must have 
 elaborated, that which is to gain force and life in us. For we 
 not only learn more thoroughly the things we work out for 
 ourselves, but with this self-helpfulness are closely connected 
 the feelings of successful effort. But feelings are best capa- 
 ble of rendering mobile and permanent the multitude of our 
 inner states. That with which the memory of painful or 
 happy hours is associated, that which is entwined with the 
 heart by a thousand threads, stands, as a rule, nearest to 
 consciousness, and generally offers itself first to the newly- 
 entering perceptions as an aid to apperception. 1 
 
 Ideas of high emotional value, groups of thought that 
 proceeded from very strong, distinct perceptions, and, in 
 consequence of frequent repetition, have made numerous 
 
 1 This fact is very beautifully expressed by Vogel in the well known 
 poem " Das Erkennen " (The Recognition) : 
 
 " A wanderer, with his staff in hand, 
 Comes home again from a foreign land ; 
 His hair is begrimed, his face is burned ; 
 Who'll first know the lad that's home returned ? " 
 
 His friend, the collector, does not recognize him, and even his sweet- 
 heart opposes a cool and reserved attitude to the greeting of the young fel- 
 low, so much has the sun scorched his face. But the mother? Ah ! at the 
 first glance she recognizes the returned wanderer. In her soul lives most 
 strongly and warmly the dear son's image, glorified by the sunshine of un- 
 selfish, faithful love. So closely has the youth grown with her whole be- 
 ing that she has remembered him daily and hourly, and even in the 
 stillness of the little church or the quiet grave-yard she has sent long- 
 ing thoughts after her absent son. So entirely does his image fill her 
 soul that she, in contrast with the collector and the sweetheart, has 
 no room for other persons and interests, for distracting and diverting 
 thoughts. Such true affection sharpens the aging eye, so that it turns 
 steady and clear upon the stranger. 
 
 " Sorely as the sun his face has burned, 
 The mother's eye knows her boy returned."
 
 46 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 combinations among themselves and with the self, manifest 
 this activity and susceptibility, by virtue of which they return 
 to consciousness upon the slightest occasion. They form 
 such dominating habits of thought as arise from scientific 
 study, professions, and daily environments. . 
 
 True, the strength and activity of the apperceiving ideas 
 do not of themselves guarantee the correctness of the apper- 
 ception. The child, for example, whose relatively modest 
 and defective store of experience is ready at hand, not infre- 
 quently apperceives more quickly than the adult. Yet on 
 this account it contributes more to the external perception, 
 thus giving rise to incorrect subjective apperceptions. The 
 case is similar with the adult who, during his whole life, has 
 not been freed from closely restricted relations, and in con- 
 sequence of the limitation of his store of ideas, of the nar- 
 rowness of his mental horizon, is able only with difficulty to 
 bring his mind into harmony with foreign thoughts, customs 
 and habits, being but seldom able to speak of them without 
 prejudice. Here the strength of individual experience re- 
 peated a thousand times, and thus grown to a favorite habit, 
 is a hindrance to the objective apprehension of the new ; 
 what is lost in logical consistency is made up in psychical 
 intensity. And thus even forceful characters who have 
 produced admirable results in some definite, practical sphere, 
 and for this reason, being sure of victory, come to believe 
 that they can dispense with all theory, are often found to 
 be lacking in capacity of apperception for new facts of 
 experience. They either dismiss the facts summarily or 
 keep certain formulas and judgments ready, with which the 
 new experience must be measured, whether for good or bad. 
 They are only too much inclined to regard every innovation, 
 so far as they grant it any significance at all, as only an old 
 thought in a new garment. " Nothing new under the sun,"
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 47 
 
 this is the constant magic formula for all uncomfortable 
 facts and theories. "The good is not new, and the new is 
 not good." Thus without thorough testing, following for 
 the most part the first impression, such people are accustomed 
 to decide quickly, with over- weening confidence. In this 
 case the apperception is completed too easily and superfi- 
 cially ; it leaves behind no strong feeling that influences the 
 rest of the world of thought and arouses interest and will. 
 
 If, therefore, the apperception is to proceed vigorously 
 and correctly, then, not merely strong and active, but also 
 significant, wide-reaching, and plastic groups of ideas in 
 which there is an indwelling tendency for completion and 
 perfection, must confront the object of apperception. For 
 only in such cases do so many related elements rise into 
 consciousness that the new is not falsified by chance ideas, 
 but apprehended by that thought-complex to whose content 
 it corresponds most closely. 
 
 Yet, if it is to fulfil its end completely, the apperceiving 
 thought-complex must by no means be lacking in care- 
 ful elaboration and organization. Where the ideas do not 
 stand in the right relation to one another, or where they 
 suffer from obscurity and indefiniteness, there is to be seen 
 that superficial facility of apperception which throws to- 
 gether the most heterogeneous elements, that precipitate 
 judging peculiar to uncritical minds. There may be in 
 such apprehension a certain correctness ; but since the simi- 
 lar and the opposed, the false and the true, are not sharply 
 distinguished, the apperception is either precipitate or en- 
 tirely false. Where, on the contrary, strong, disciplined 
 thought weighs carefully that which is to be brought into 
 relation with the new ; where clear, studied, and well-united 
 groups of ideas come into contact with it, there the apper- 
 ception will of tea be slow, but it will be completed so much
 
 48 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 the more correctly and certainly. Then, as a rule, it is not 
 at all necessary that the apperceiving mass of thought be 
 reproduced in its full extent and content, but it is sufficient 
 that the conception, the law, the principle, stand in con- 
 sciousness. The latter represent all the related ideas that 
 make themselves felt as unconscious co-operating elements in 
 the course of apperception. 
 
 We saw that to the subject of apperception belong also 
 the obscure psychical conditions, the feelings and obscure 
 notions, that accompany the apperceiving ideas. This 
 shows us what significance the whole mental and emotional 
 condition has for the course of mental assimilation. Domi- 
 nating states of mind that have no internal relation to the 
 object of apperception, secret care and anxiety that disturb 
 the spirit, may also prevent the strongest aids to appercep- 
 tion from rising, thus making their force ineffective. In the 
 life of every person come hours in which, to his own surprise, 
 he maintains an unimpressionable and indifferent attitude 
 towards the most interesting events and facts. A cer- 
 tain bodily and mental tranquillity is then necessary to re- 
 establish the equilibrium between the various psychical 
 elements, if an unbiased apprehension of the new is to 
 follow. Yet more: our inner life with all the feelings and 
 inclinations, with the secret impulses and interests, which at 
 the time stand above or near the threshold of consciousness, 
 must receive a uniform impression, and this world of thought 
 and feeling in which we live must be related to the content 
 of the new ; in a word, the right mood must dominate. 
 Then consciousness will be occupied with ideas that will 
 ward off disturbing thoughts and efforts, and, by reason of 
 their uniform tone of feeling, will greatly facilitate the 
 reproduction of the right aids to apperception. The sphere 
 in which the latter are to be sought approaches consciousness,
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 49 
 
 and every element of its content may become a beginning 
 member of a series of reproduced ideas. Finally, when im- 
 portant individual members of these related products of con- 
 sciousness rise especially high, anticipating the perception ; 
 when a certain tension of the sense organs precedes the 
 expected impression, and an increased power of attention is 
 felt, then the favorable condition is present in which apper- 
 ception may take place the condition of expectation. 
 Many spiritual arms are stretched out to receive that for 
 which we are prepared, so that we assimilate more easily 
 and more accurately than when surprised by a new experi- 
 ence. We have now reached an important factor that is 
 always present in active apperception, viz., the icill. That 
 a perception or a memory picture may be expected, or the 
 mind incited to a fundamental apperception, it is often ne- 
 cessary to have a vigorous action of the will, in addition to 
 appropriate emotional states of mind. The will holds the 
 perception firmly in consciousness until it is rightly recog- 
 nized and understood. It controls the desires and feelings 
 that affect the mind, so that the right helps to apperception 
 may appear. Without an exercise of will the attention 
 would soou flag. The reason that among men a failure to 
 understand is so frequent, and that all new and epoch-mak- 
 ing doctrines find so slow and so difficult a recognition, is, to 
 a considerable extent, due to the want of good-will toward 
 these subjects. This has been experienced by all great men 
 who have been in advance of their time. This was experi- 
 enced even by the Apostles of so victorious a cause as the 
 gospel of Christ. Let us think of the foremost among them, 
 Paul, the great Apostle to the heathen. Few teachers have 
 been so inspired and have preached the new faith so impres- 
 sively as this chosen warrior of the Lord. How admirably 
 he knows how to arouse apperceiving ideas in his hearers ;
 
 50 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 AS when, for example, he reminds the Athenians of the un- 
 known God, towhom they have unwittingly erected an al- 
 tar ; of the splendid temples in whose halls the gods were to 
 abide ; of their poets who sang of the divine origin of man. 
 If, notwithstanding, his sermon found entrance into but 
 limited circles, and was not understood by the great mass of 
 Jews and heathens, such unbelief was not founded merely 
 in the nature of their mental and emotional life. The Athen- 
 ian pride of culture would not learn from the despised Jew, 
 the legal pride of the Israelite would not accept any 
 innovation, while in other places (Ephesus, Antioch, 
 etc.) self-interest and envy closed the door of the heart 
 to the gospel. Custom and inclination, desire and passion, 
 and not least, indolence of will, very often make a man 
 incapable of recognizing and receiving new truths. The in- 
 telligent assimilation of strange truths, the transformation 
 of one's own conviction, demands not a slight degree of 
 mental exertion and force. In this case, to apperceive 
 means to undergo victoriously an internal struggle. Such a 
 mental struggle cannot be easily understood, however, by 
 one whose heart is already bound up in other interests than 
 those of the investigation of stern truth, by one who, on no 
 account, will allow himself to be disturbed in the secure pos- 
 session of an acquired good or an agreeable habit. Here 
 the will does not determine the opinion, but the wish is 
 father to the thought. Hence that which is regarded as lack 
 of intelligence is not infrequently a defect of the will. To 
 apperceive impartially and thoroughly, despite inclinations 
 and wishes, at least in the spheres of science and ethics, is 
 at bottom a moral act, and the prerogative of a strong 
 character. 
 
 Side by side with the psychical conditions, as they were 
 presented above, must not be overlooked those physical pro-
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 51 
 
 cesses that are connected with the former, and that in the 
 process of apperception prove not less effective. It is highly 
 probable that all our mental activity is accompanied by cor- 
 responding nerve excitations ; indeed it is probable that a 
 great part of our ideas would not be present without them. 
 We are thinking not merely of the rise of sensations, in 
 which that fact has for a long time been generally recog- 
 nized, but we are thinking also of the union and reproduc- 
 tion of ideas. The oftener, however, a nerve-current is 
 called into exercise, so much the easier is the transmission. 
 An effect remains from every excitation of the nerve and its 
 central station, the ganglion cells, which puts the current into 
 a condition to follow a renewed excitation more easily. 
 Such ' ' functional tendencies " towards the renewal of an 
 excitation are of great significance for the course of apper- 
 ception. If a similar idea enters consciousness, it will, by 
 virtue of a remaining tendency, or disposition, renew an 
 earlier similar nerve-excitation, and thereby facilitate the 
 return of the psychical product corresponding to it, that 
 is to say, the apperceiviug idea. The functional tendencies 
 of nerves made active according to the laws of relationship 
 may, according to this, conduce essentially to the awaken- 
 ing of such ideas as hasten forward as aids to our apper- 
 ception. And it is clear that the apperceiving activity 
 within definite spheres of thought must be perfected the more 
 surely and speedily, the more the corresponding excitations 
 are exercised in certain nerve currents by frequent repetition, 
 and the more undisturbed they decline. These functional 
 tendencies attain special importance in the apperception of 
 an expected sense impression. Then related ideas stand in 
 consciousness, which are accompanied by the same physio- 
 logical occurrences, though perhaps in a less degree, which 
 once preceded their formation as physical condition and
 
 52 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 cause. These advancing excitations of nerves and nerve- 
 centers on the ground of acquired functional tendency, do 
 not contribute as motor irritants to the intentional cessation 
 of the action of sense organs, but they strengthen the expected 
 sense-excitation and help it to apprehend more quickly. 
 We become conscious of how much our bodily organs are 
 concerned in the progress of apperception through the sensa- 
 tions connected with it. 
 
 In certain nerve activities essential conditions are given 
 for the delay or prevention of an apperception, as well as 
 for its successful and rapid completion. It is a fact that, 
 after heavy, tedious illnesses which leave behind a general 
 weakness of the body, and especially of the nerves, tbe 
 duration of the apperception is particularly long. The same 
 is true when one is in a condition of fatigue. As is well 
 known, the blood continually brings to the nerves nourish- 
 ing matter, which there undergoes a chemical change. The 
 strength and quickness of this change are in proportion to 
 the vigor with which the nerves are set in action through 
 bodily or mental effort. The continuously flowing blood 
 takes up those products of the change which could not be 
 used in the future, and replaces them with new material. 
 If, in consequence of long and difficult labor, the outlay is 
 greater than the blood is able to replace, then arises that 
 condition which is known as exhaustion. In this condition 
 we feel our mental activity arrested to a significant degree. 
 Notwithstanding the great effort of the will, and even with 
 the presence of psychical conditions favorable to apper- 
 ception, the assimilation of new perceptions, or ideas, 
 will be completed but slowly and imperfectly. Indeed, it 
 may be entirely omitted, if, in consequence of a lasting or 
 transient'disturbance of a nerve current, the corresponding 
 physiological action is not accomplished, as when we say,
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 53 
 
 " The nerves no longer act together." We then become 
 actively conscious of how much the activity of the soul is 
 dependent upon the co-operation of the central excitations 
 and nerve-actions, since to attempt to do without those 
 would be as vain as to attempt to play upon an instrument 
 without strings. 
 
 3. SIGNIFICANCE OF APPERCEPTION FOR THE MENTAL 
 DEVELOPMENT OF MAN. 
 
 Our text-books on psychology usually treat the subject of 
 apperception in connection with that of internal perception, 
 after sense-perception, reproduction, memory, imagination, 
 the ego, and even judging and reasoning have already been 
 treated. This might give rise to the idea that mental as- 
 similation takes place rather late in the development of 
 mind, and that it is limited to a definite epoch. 
 
 This opinion has actually been voiced in a very deter- 
 mined manner. It has been denied that apperception 
 belongs to childhood, or to the school period of life, the 
 claim being made that it is confined to the age of reflection. 
 But those who say this, overlook the fact that passive 
 apperceptions occur even in earliest childhood, and that the 
 idea of apperception cannot be limited to the cases of 
 intentional assimilation of new impressions. If appercep- 
 tion means the grasping of new ideas by the aid of present 
 similar ones, if it is the process of growth of the soul, 
 then it belongs not only to one, but to all epochs of the 
 mental development of man ; it must play a very important 
 part in the sphere of inner growth, during the whole of life. 
 Let us try to comprehend the significance of apperception 
 in the mental development of the individual. 
 
 The first great task proposed to the child's mind is that 
 of learning to find its way in the world of perceptions ;
 
 54 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 to master the world by learning to know it. It does not 
 solve this problem in a strictly systematic manner, contem- 
 plating, closely it may be, one object after the other, and 
 thus proceeding gradually according to a definite plan from 
 the parts to the whole. That is by no means possible. 
 Perceptions, as a rule, come in masses and are too transient 
 to give the child a chance to devote his particular attention 
 to each one of them. Besides, he is not able to apprehend 
 them sharply and correctly, owing to the imperfection of his 
 senses and the poverty of his knowledge. And even if he 
 were able to do this, it would be very impracticable to try 
 to devote to all sensations the same sense-energy and 
 attention. For, as the child is mostly occupied with more 
 than one object, his perceiving and knowing would for a 
 long time lag far behind his practical needs, and would 
 never correspond to them. The child, on the contrary, 
 takes possession of the outer world first as a whole, by 
 being for the present satisfied with an obscure general 
 impression. From this he gradually selects and grasps the 
 important elements one by one. His choice is not deter- 
 mined by logical reasons, but by his practical needs as 
 determined by circumstances. Those objects and events 
 which, as conditions of life, lie particularly near to the feel- 
 ings and desires of the child (food and drink, lodging, 
 dress, parents, etc.) or excite his interest in a vivid manner, 
 are preferred above all others. When the remaining com- 
 ponent parts of the total perception, at least for the time 
 being, reach only the general field of consciousness, the 
 preferred objects rise to the focus of consciousness. 1 Thus 
 by degrees several clearer percepts rise out of the confused 
 manifoldness of obscure general impressions ; the child 
 
 1 See Wondt'a Theory of Apperception in the present volume.
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 55 
 
 gains a number of fundamental ideas that are mostly char- 
 acterized by great activity and powerful tone of feeling. 
 
 For these perceptions are not heaped up like dead trea- 
 sures, but almost as soou as aquired they become living 
 forces that assist in the assimilation of new perceptions, 
 thus strengthening the power of apprehension. They are the 
 contents of the soul that now permanently assert themselves 
 in the act of perception. For wherever it is at all possible, 
 the child refers the new to the related older ideas. "NVith 
 the aid of familiar perceptions, he appropriates that which 
 is foreign to him and conquers with the arms of apper- 
 ception the outer world which assails his senses. Thus, 
 for instance, Steiuthal, 1 from his own observation, relates 
 of a two-year-old girl, that she called the picture of spectral 
 forms of women with long floating garments " birds," corn- 
 stalks "trees," swimming swans "fishes," and mistook a 
 flag that floated from the top of a house for a " white horse." 
 Something similar to this is told by Lazarus of a child that 
 had been brought up in the South; snow-flakes, for in- 
 stance, that he saw for the first time, he called " butter- 
 flies." And who does not know from his own experience 
 how the child at first considers every man his "pa" or 
 "daddy" or "father," every flying creature as "bird" (or 
 whatever else the expression of the little ones may be), 
 every plant as " tree " ; how he apperceives the lightning 
 perhaps as a fiery swallow, the clouds as mountains, the 
 the lights in the windows of a distant house in the darkness 
 of the night as " peep eyes." Such false or limited apper- 
 ception is peculiar not only to early childhood, but it asserts 
 itself also later on. Let us listen to the report of an atten- 
 tive observer of six-year-old children, who visit the zoo- 
 
 1 Abriss der Sprachwissenschaft," p. 158.
 
 56 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 logical garden for the first time. There is so much new 
 presented to them that they are unable to carry away clear 
 ideas of what they have seen. They must master the new 
 impression as well as possible under the circumstances. 
 And thus we are told that the little ones regarded the buffalo 
 and aurochs as cows, ibexes and chamois simply as goats, 
 the rhinoceros as an elephant, while they loudly and joyfully 
 greeted the tiger with "kitty, kitty! " The ostrich was to 
 them a big goose or a stork ; smaller exotic birds they called 
 finches (for these birds had often been observed on class 
 excursions) ; beavers, first mice, then fishes or frogs; and 
 the seal was after long deliberation classified as a fish, but one 
 " from another river." 1 Here we have by no means merely 
 witty comparisons, as perhaps an adult would jestingly try 
 to make, no toying with ideas, but earnest work of the child, 
 who in his manner seeks to understand strange new impres- 
 sions. He does not compare merely, but he straightway 
 identifies the new with the familiar. According to a law of 
 the mind that cannot be further derived, but only settled as 
 a fact, he must work thus, if by degrees he is to change 
 from a slave to a master of his external perceptions. In 
 accordance with his mental nature, he cannot but practice 
 usury with the acquired capital, he must assimilate new 
 ideas with the present ones. The latter become the organs 
 of the perceiving soul with which it grasps the manifold 
 world of perception, articulates it, arranges it in accordance 
 with the present store of ideas. 
 
 Language a in this connection renders important services 
 
 1 Lehmensick in Just's Praxis der Erziehungsschuk, 1888, part II, 
 p. 75. 
 
 * That the learning of the language is itself an apperception-process, 
 Lazarus has shown iu his Life c/ the Soul (third edition), II-, pp. 168- 
 173.
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 57 
 
 to the mind. It is true that apperception is possible also 
 without it ; as, for instance, the child in the two first years 
 of his life refers throughout the new to the old, without 
 always having a corresponding word at his command. But 
 still apperception proceeds more surely and more easily, 
 when the fundamental ideas are fixed by language. The 
 name separates each one of them from other notions and 
 holds it fast in memory, so that the ideas gain in clearness 
 and liveliness, and can more easily assist in the acts of 
 apperception. The word unites similar perceptions, holding 
 them together in groups and enabling them to unite with the 
 fundamental idea. Applied to new contents of conscious- 
 ness, the word is an expression of accomplished appercep- 
 tion. 
 
 The word does indeed in certain cases rather hinder than 
 further a right apperception. If it is a name, for instance, 
 that belongs to a certain fundamental idea exclusively, if it 
 signifies an individual, a single phenomenon and only this 
 one, then the word does not form a far-reaching roof under 
 which other related perceptions also can find a place, but it 
 coincides merely with the apperceiving idea. When other 
 perceptions are now joined with the latter, they of course 
 having also their own names, the individual name is used as 
 a generic name, so that the new idea is incorrectly named. 
 (It is indifferent whether the child received the name from 
 others or whether he formed it for himself.) A few exam- 
 ples may serve to illustrate this. " A child that was begin- 
 ing to talk, saw and heard a duck on the water, and said 
 ' quack.' After that, he called all birds and insects, on the 
 one hand, and all the fluids, on the other, ' quack.' At last 
 he called also coins ' quack,' after having seen the image of 
 an eagle on a French sou. Thus, through gradual generaliz- 
 ing (?) the child went so far as to designate a fly, a coin
 
 58 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 and even wine by the same onomatopoetic word, although 
 only the first perception contained the name-giving charac- 
 teristic." 1 Such an extraordinarily superficial apperception 
 can occur perhaps only in the first months of life, yet simi- 
 lar processes repeat themselves regularly also in later years. 
 When in all earnest the child at first gives to foreign moun- 
 tains, rivers and creeks the names of his native place ; 
 when Schiller, for instance, as a little boy declared all rivers 
 of his native state to be "Neckars," or another three-year- 
 old boy who had before that seen from his window daily the 
 Syra creek, called the river near his home, upon seeing it for 
 the first time, 4 ' Elstersyra," - here as in many other instances 
 we meet with restricted apperception, i.e., an apprehension 
 where the most varied observations are with the aid of a 
 name traced back to certain individual ideas. The child will 
 certainly correct his apprehension later on ; he will frequently 
 have to unlearn. But this drawback is not serious when we 
 consider the fact that he is really appropriating the new and 
 making it subject to himself, that he is learning to rule 
 the impressions of the outer world. Besides, there is not 
 much to be done against such a restricted apperception, at 
 least not in early childhood. It corresponds to the nature 
 of the child's mind, and is mostly performed without the 
 knowledge or assistance of the teacher. It does not even 
 appear advisable to give to the child from the beginning the 
 corresponding word for every new perception : he would not 
 be able to remember all the names for the multitude of ex- 
 ternal impressions. But, where confusion is likely to result, 
 some persons would meet the child's urgent inquiries for the 
 names of things in another manner : in the earliest period of 
 development they tell the child the generic name of many ho- 
 
 Preyer, Ttm toul of the child, I. E. S., Vol. IX., p. 'JO.
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 59 
 
 mogeneous objects, and not that of the individual or the 
 species. They speak to their little ones, not of the birch, oak, 
 linden, pine, fir, but of the tree. For the swallow, the finch, the 
 sparrow, the starling, the name bird or a still more childlike 
 expression is for a time sufficient. In this case the name of 
 the apperceiving idea presents a far-reaching roof under 
 which numerous related perceptions may collect ; the child 
 transfers the generic name to similar notions that really be- 
 long to it, so that unlearning will not be necessary later 
 on. Homogeneous perceptions unite most easily to a 
 single indefinite idea, which manifests all that was common 
 to the former, but without the distinguishing characteristics, 
 and which therefore presents a silhouette rather than a 
 picture of the objects. A general idea, or picture, arises, 
 with whose aid related things or events are apperceived. 
 As the child, however, gets into the habit of tracing back a 
 great number of homogeneous perceptions to relatively few 
 generic names, he makes a very important advance. " For, 
 first of all, the infinite variety of outer and adjacent things 
 that come to meet the attention of the mind and threaten 
 nearly to overwhelm it, is so greatly simplified through the 
 combination of the whole series of individual ideas into rela- 
 tively few general pictures, that even the less vigorous child- 
 mind can soon manage to find the way through it. Then, 
 however, a substantial preparation is made for conscious 
 thinking proper, through this formation of general ideas, 
 and its material is brought to the mind not in crude, sensuous 
 directness, but already logically prepared in some degree." 1 
 Finally, the child is enabled with the aid of his general 
 pictures soon to follow the linguistic intercourse of adults 
 with understanding, and also to take part in it. 2 
 
 1 Pfisterer's Paedagogische Psychologic, p. 95. 
 
 * If country children on entering school have less power of expres- 
 sion than city children, the reason for it is to be found, not only in the
 
 60 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 The fact that the child with the aid of fundamental ideas 
 or general impressions intellectually conquers a givat part 
 of his environment, has given rise to the opinion that man 
 perceives first the general, the genus, and then proceeds 
 from this to the cognizance of the particular, the single 
 thing. 1 
 
 That is just as erroneous as the current assumption that he 
 proceeds from the species, in order to elevate himself 
 gradually in a strictly logical manner to the genus. It is not 
 with the naming and discerning of the species that he begins 
 to ascend regularly to the genus, but with obscure and 
 general impressions that are mostly held fast and connected 
 temporarily by a generic name. But as little as the word is 
 identical in meaning with the idea it signifies, so little does 
 the generic name contain the cognition of the general, the 
 rational. It includes, on the contrary, for a long time 
 many similar ideas, from which later a conception-content 
 is first gained through discernment of the species. The 
 seeming conception of the general first awakens only the 
 
 want of exercise in speaking, but also in the circumstance that they have 
 not learned as many expressions for the general notions current in the 
 family conversation, and therefore cannot express themselves as readily 
 as city children who have grown up in the midst of a more lively inter- 
 course. But the apperception of the country child is often the more 
 vigorous and original because of this fact. 
 
 1 Compare Sigwart 1 s Logic, I., p. 49 : " Quite contrary to the common 
 doctrine of the formation of concepts, the general precedes the special 
 with individuals, as it does in language, just as an incomplete idea pre- 
 cedes a complete one, the latter presupposing more far-reaching discrimi- 
 nation." According to this, S. looks upon the indefinite apprehension of 
 the child as a logical activity that selects from many perceivable charac- 
 teristics the essential ones. But that is not the case. It is a result of a 
 psychical impotency, not of a logical capacity. That man descends in 
 the course of his mental development from the general to the particular, 
 can be admitted only as far an the name is concerned, not with reference 
 to the contents of the developing thought.
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 61 
 
 generic name, which is made use of for psychological 
 reasons. We have at first not general, deeply penetrating 
 thought, but rather a somewhat indefinite perception. 
 
 For it is undoubtedly true that the facility of apperception 
 in earliest childhood necessarily results in a merely super- 
 ficial or rather one-sided apprehension of things. So long 
 as the child must trace the most varied perceptions back to a 
 relatively few fundamental notions or general impressions, 
 so long will he have no regard for an all-sided observation 
 and keen discrimination of single objects. It is sufficient 
 for a time that he grasps one or the other characteristic of 
 the latter clearly, thus holding fast the idea. Often even this 
 is lacking, and he retains only an obscure sensuous impres- 
 sion, especially when the name was offered too early. Such 
 wholly or partially empty word-shells often fill themselves 
 later with the right thought-content; often, however, they 
 assert themselves unchanged in consciousness. Thus the 
 child tells his playmate, perhaps with triumphant pride : 
 "Our house has got a mortgage on it and yours hasn't," 
 thinking that a mortgage must be something wonderfully 
 fine and excellent ; or it happens to him as to the Berlin 
 market-woman who called her colleague a " confounded 
 differential tariff " with the intention of saying something 
 very hurtful. Makeshift apperceptions, i. e., assimila- 
 tions without sufficient or correct apperception aids, arise, 
 which are always equivalent to misunderstandings. Then 
 it may happen, to quote a few examples from life, that 
 the child understands by *' dressed beef," beef in some 
 sort of apparel ; by " guardian," a person who takes care of 
 the garden; by " salon," a liquor shop; and forms such 
 words as "exercise clerk" (excise), "upper glass" 
 (opera"). In short, as the child is lacking in a rich, logically 
 formed sphere of thought, he fails to grasp the objects of
 
 62 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 the external world in a manner strictly objective, but appre- 
 hends them subjectively ; he sees them in the light of his 
 limited experience, his feelings and inclinations ; he asks 
 more for the worth they have for himself (for his ego) than 
 for their meaning. To this then corresponds also the real 
 or imaginary intercourse that he has with them. As he now 
 sees no difference between body and soul, but looks upon 
 the feeling and desiring, the acting and moving body as 
 his ego, so he conceives also his relation to outer objects 
 in a very childlike manner. He apperceives them with the 
 aid of his idea of himself, f. e., his ego-idea. As his body 
 evinces life in arbitrary motion, he adjudges personal being 
 to all that moves really or apparently of itself. For to show 
 life and motion is to him identical. He places external ob- 
 jects on one and the same stage with himself, and ascribes to 
 them his mental states ; he looks upon them as sensitive and 
 volitional beings. 1 Hence the lively interest of the little ones 
 for animals and plants, the affectionate intercourse with 
 them, the understanding they have for their real or imagi- 
 nary conditions. Hence the sharp ear of youth for the lan- 
 guage of birds, which they, " happy in their unconscious 
 wisdom," apperceive after their own poetic fashion. 
 
 When, however, the child thus ascribes his own mental 
 states to outer things, when in early years he discovers so 
 many new and mysterious things in nature, everything may 
 appear to him in the vagueness of the fairy tale ; at any rate, 
 his apprehension will not be sober and clear as with adults. 2 
 
 1 A child not yet two years old, said pityingly on seeing the dripping 
 plants: " Tree cry, cry oh" ! 
 
 * This explains also many strange and almost marvellous incidents of 
 the days of our childhood. A friend of mine told me, for instance, the fol- 
 lowing incident of his boyhood : " Close to our house, near the limits of 
 the village, were the grassy plains of the Elster. There was a bowling- 
 alley, and on one of its sides grew weeds, celandines, nettles, thistles, and
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 63 
 
 We comprehend how the child builds up for himself such 
 a world of fancy also in playing ; how the boy can have in- 
 tercourse with his wooden horse for hours as with a trusty 
 and intelligent playmate ; how the little girl can nurse her 
 dolls in full earnest with a truly touching tenderness. We 
 understand also the great joy, the lively interest with which 
 they both listen to the fairy-tales of the mother. For those 
 are tales that lead them into their dearest thought-regions, 
 stories that they anticipate with their whole world of per- 
 ception and feeling. 
 
 Thus, early childhood is the great harvest time in which 
 the child apperceiviugly takes possession of the outer world 
 in its principal traits with the aid of fundamental notions 
 and general impressions ; but just because he always refers 
 the new to the old, he grasps it very one-sidedly and sub- 
 jectively. It is the time when he prefers to have a fanciful 
 intercourse with the outer world and to meet a fanciful 
 apprehension and representation of it with a peculiar under- 
 standing and a lively interest. Finally, so far as his rela- 
 tion to the mental, the religious, the moral world is 
 
 dandelions, in exuberant profusion. This place, whose damp ground was 
 hidden from the rays of the sun, had an uncommon charm for me, as I 
 imagined behind its wildly entangled world of leaves marvellous things 
 of all sorts. I always went with a feeling of awe, and yet returned with 
 the hope and premonition that I should there discover strange things. 
 One morning the dew still sparkled on the beautifully formed leaves of 
 the lady's mantle (alchemilla) of which I was very fond, and to which my 
 father to my chagrin had given the very prosaic name " goose slipper." 
 Everything had an enchanting interest. Just then a big green frog with 
 eyes that glittered like gold ran toward that chaos of leaves. The soli- 
 tude of the place, my own lively feeling, made me see in the frog a little 
 mannikin dressed in a green glittering gown. Often after that I tried to 
 see the same again or at least to spy his little house." When the same 
 boy, at the age of s^lx, came for the first time to the city, he mistook the 
 red glove at the sign of the glove-maker for the bloody hand of a giant. 
 The red, glistening wheels of a locomotive appeared to him fiery and 
 glowing.
 
 64 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 concerned, bis apperceiving ideas prove themselves here also 
 to be standard and determining factors. To them belong 
 in the first place the ideas that are associated with sensuous 
 feelings and aspirations. For even if, in the intercourse 
 with nature and men, nearly all feelings and interests awake 
 in the child, such as interest for beautiful forms and moral 
 judgments, sympathy for the welfare and sorrow of others, 
 and joy in intellectual activity, we may still assert that 
 during the time when the child yet identifies his ego with 
 his body, the sensual feelings and desires predominate in 
 him. They very often influence his moral judgment regard- 
 ing his own conduct or the actions of others, so that he 
 looks upon that as right which is pleasing to him, and that 
 as bad which he fears. Is that man or that animal good 
 or bad? This oft-repeated question of the child fre- 
 quently betrays more sensuous interest than ethical feel- 
 ing. And thus for a long time the sensuous would pre- 
 vent the ethical from asserting itself rightly, and would 
 control the juvenile soul exclusively and absolutely, if from 
 the beginning, under normal conditions, another important 
 sphere of thought did not meet it, and hinder and restrain 
 it; namely, the world of ideas that clings to the child's 
 ideal picture of his parents. Here also the sensuous feel- 
 ings and desires do, to be sure, often assert themselves. 
 For, why does the picture of the parents stand so vividly 
 before the soul of the child? First of all, most likely, 
 because he sees himself bound to them with his whole being, 
 because they are the source of his well-being, because he 
 receives reward and punishment from them. The rever- 
 ence for father and mother is at the beginning very closely 
 united with the sensuous feelings of fear and dependence. 
 But these sensuous feelings and relations that give so high 
 a motive-worth to the picture of the parents for early child-
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 65 
 
 hood, arc, at the same time, just because they are awakened 
 by ethical personalities, always iudissolubly united with 
 the intimations of the high ethical worth of the parents, and 
 the ethical order of the world which they represent. That 
 father and mother are more than mere supporters, powerful 
 authorities, soon dawns in the consciousness, even if only 
 in an obscure feeling. And thus the dominating idea of 
 the parents includes both a sensuous and an ethical total of 
 feeling, and that too in such close connection that it would 
 mostly be very difficult to determine where the one begins 
 and the other ends. This ideal picture is to the child that 
 grows up in happy, honorable family relations, the embodied 
 morality, the model of all that is good and right, the living 
 conscience. Wherever a moral judgment of the worth of 
 the disposition of others, or a decision in a matter of his own 
 conduct is to be induced, the question that lies nearest to 
 the child is : What do father and mother say about it ? 
 Who has not observed one of the little ones in such a state 
 that he is not sure how he is to regard his own action or 
 that of another? He looks inquiringly from father to 
 mother, to read in their countenances the right, and when 
 they give an unmistakable and clear answer, then his 
 ethical judgment is decided at once. When he has done 
 wrong, he avoids his parents : he shuns their look and 
 sight, he shrinks from the thought that makes his conduct 
 appear wrong and punishable. Thus, where the sensuous 
 world of thought and feeling does not assert itself exclu- 
 sively, the unspoiled child apperceives sentiments and 
 actions mostly through the ideal he has of his parents, 
 which stands before his soul as an ideal or pattern. It is 
 also through his ideal of them that he gradually gains a 
 notion of God and of right inner relations to him. 
 
 Let us accompany the child further, to the next stage of
 
 66 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 development, which reaches about from the seventh to the 
 tenth year. The child enters upon the boy and girl age : 
 he goes to school. The world of his previous experiences 
 may be said to enter with him into the little school-room 
 - for in that sphere of thought does early instruction 
 mostly move and is met by a new, strange world, one 
 that lies beyond the limits of the home. But the 
 objects of perception do not continue to assail his senses in 
 masses and without plan ; they come before his eye in a 
 regulated procession, set by the teacher's art into narrow 
 frames that separate them from each other and make their 
 careful contemplation possible. Hitherto the child has 
 given himself up, in the free play of his fancy, to outer 
 impressions, letting himself be guided by them ; now he is to 
 absorb those perceptions in earnest labor and to make them 
 serve his purposes. Hitherto he was accustomed to jump 
 from one object of interest to another and to follow the 
 direction of the strongest sense impressions ; now he is to 
 learn to fix his attention and to direct it for some time to 
 certain objects of instruction, and to repel disturbing exci- 
 tations of the senses. He does not always succeed in this 
 unaccustomed "concentration of consciousness." Often he 
 stands dull and indifferent before the objects that he is 
 to view, and which the teacher believes to have been well- 
 chosen and well-presented ; he looks, yet perceives nothing ; 
 he talks about the things and yet* does not really grasp them ; 
 they remain indifferent to him. Attention then quickly 
 flags. At another time, he cannot gaze long enough to 
 satisfy his desire : he is all eyes and ears, and he departs 
 from the object of his attention with regret. It has be- 
 witched him, because he has been fond of it from child- 
 hood, or it has received peculiar illumination. Thus, it 
 is not the excitation of the senses which here holds the
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 67 
 
 attention, but the great number of apperceiving ideas that 
 were awakened by the object observed. These ideas often 
 invest the newly entering perception with so strong a motive- 
 worth that the will springs forth and holds fast in conscious- 
 ness what at the beginning was noticed only involuntarily. 
 With the aid of the will, the mind of the child grasps new 
 experiences in the light of past ones. 1 And, therefore, even 
 here we cannot yet speak of a complete, purely intellectual, 
 apprehension of external objects. To be sure, it becomes, 
 especially in consequence of instruction, gradually more 
 correct, more varied and clear: still, it is yet so closely 
 united with subjective notions that it may be considered, on 
 the whole, a fanciful apprehension of nature. 
 
 Not always can the objects of which instruction treats be 
 presented to the child in natura. Pictures then take their 
 place. It is commonly supposed that they produce much 
 the same impression as the real things. But that is the case 
 
 'An incident from school-room practice may serve as an example. 
 The teacher speaks with the little ones of the first school year about 
 the sun. After having attended to the necessary observations, he wants 
 to make them understand that the sun shines, warms, is in the sky, 
 and is created by God. The teacher does his best to make this clear 
 to the children he finds it impossible. They repeat all that he said, 
 but it seems as if it were so strange to them, that it must be uttered 
 without their really believing it. Then a child drops the remark: " The 
 sun is God's lamp." Immediately the conversation receives an entirely 
 new impulse. Numerous ideas awake and press to the front, thus placing 
 the object in the right light. Now the children see God light his 
 lamp, as it were, early in the morning, so that his children can see 
 during the day ; they see him blow it out in the evening when all go to 
 bed, or turn it down when it is dim. That the sun shines as the light of 
 heaven, that he brightens all and gives us light to see our work, that 
 darkness covers the earth when he ceases to beam this and much more 
 is now clear to the child, and has become his mental property. In a very 
 childlike form, to be sure, but when the little ones cannot grasp the 
 objects of the outer world in other than a fanciful way, why not let them 
 do so in this manner ?
 
 68 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 only under certain conditions, for even the ability to under- 
 stand drawings or to inteqjret pictures is an acquired power. 
 The eye sees in reality only surfaces and outlines ; of itself 
 it knows nothing of solid bodies and perspective. Thnt is 
 proved by the statements of those who, having been born 
 blind, have later received their sight. They at first regard 
 paintings simply as colored surfaces, without the least 
 thought of perspective, or of the solid bodies thus repre- 
 sented. 1 When we understand drawings and interpret 
 pictures, we do it largely with the help of the ideas we 
 already possess : we fill in the outlines until they become 
 objects ; we lend life and feeling to the dead forms ; we put 
 our own thoughts and emotions into the variegated world of 
 pictures. And the more or less we are able, in this way, to 
 put in, the more or less do we read out in return. So it is 
 also with the child. Even though he may early have had 
 practice in the comprehension of the simplest sketches, 8 
 still he understands a drawing only to the extent that he 
 has already seen and experienced something similar. 
 Whenever the picture goes beyond his range of observation, 
 beyond his experience, he does not see what he should, 
 even though he have the best of intentions. For all com- 
 prehension of pictures is an apperceiving, a grasping and 
 interpreting of them by means of strong and clear ideas 
 which we have already secured from real objects and 
 events. 
 
 A majority of the objects to be studied in school cannot 
 be presented in nalura, neither can their pictures be ob- 
 
 >Preyer, Die Seele dea Kindea, pp. 466, 4ftt. 
 
 2 My oldest little girl, even at the end of her first year, designated the 
 leaves and tendrils UIKJII the window-curtains as tree. When, in her twenty- 
 second month, I laid before her one after another the photographic pic- 
 tures of Juno Ludovisi and of Zeus from Otricoli, she immediately called 
 them " Mama " and " Man " (or " Papa," " pretty Papa ").
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 69 
 
 tained ; many others also cannot be perceived through the 
 senses at all. The child is then compelled to look within 
 himself for the means of apperception. " Instruction can 
 thus impart only words ; the ideas for which the words stand, 
 and without which they could mean nothing, must come from 
 within the child himself." " Most of the process of learning 
 consists simply in understanding words, i.e., the pupil, by 
 means of the mental store which he has already collected, 
 puts meaning into the word she hears." * Hence every lecture, 
 every narrative, every question of the teacher, is a demand 
 upon the pupil to connect the word, which in itself is mean- 
 ingless and empty, with concrete notions or thoughts already 
 in his possession ; they each require the reproduction of old 
 ideas which stand in close relation to the subject of instruc- 
 tion. Thus pupils think and feel what is peculiar to them- 
 selves 2 every time they are taught anything, each in his 
 own individual manner according to the fund of knowledge 
 at hand. 8 " But it is these hidden thoughts and feelings, 
 running quietly along beside those of the teacher," that ex- 
 plain the words which are heard, and fill them with a con- 
 crete living content ; they form the background upon which 
 the new rises, clear and sharp ; they are the apperceiving 
 force by the aid of which the new is made intelligible. 
 
 For instance, if a pupil is to follow intelligently an historical 
 
 1 Herbart's Piidagoyische Schriften, published by Willmann, Vol. II., 
 pp. 541, 605. 
 
 'Hildebrand, Vom deutschen Sprachunterricht, 3d edition, p. 54. 
 
 s Compare also the following from Emerson: "What can we see or 
 acquire, but what we are? You have seen a skillful man reading Virgil. 
 Well, that author is a thousand books to a thousand persons. Take the 
 book into your hands, and read your eyes out ; you will never find what I 
 find. If any ingenious reader would have a monopoly of the wisdom or 
 delight he gets, lie is as secure now the book is Englished, as if it were 
 imprisoned in the 1'elews tongue."
 
 70 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 or geographical lecture, the first essential condition is that he 
 be able to give to what he hears a definite concrete basis, to 
 transport himself easily into distant times and places. But 
 how can that come about? If we examine closely to see 
 where our thoughts wandered as we, in our youth, for the 
 first time, heard the story of the beautiful garden of Eden 
 and of the first human beings ; as we marched with the Israel- 
 ites through the Red Sea and encamped upon Mt. Sinai ; as 
 with Moses we looked from the heights of Mt. Nebo into the 
 promised land, where flowed milk and honey ; we make the 
 surprising discovery that it was at our own home with its val- 
 leys and mountains, where our thoughts dwelt ; that we trans- 
 ported the woods and fields of grain, the deserts and fertile 
 plains, the houses and wells, the men and animals of sacred 
 and profane history to our own neighborhood ; and, while 
 we were travelling in distant countries over sterile land and 
 mountainous regions, over seas and rivers whose names had 
 never before sounded in our ears, we were nevertheless all the 
 time at home ; we pictured foreign places clearly by means 
 of those with which we were already familiar. One is likely 
 to be reminded, by this fact, of the imaginative faculty, and 
 to rejoice over its great activity among children, who can 
 so easily bring the most distant objects within their horizon. 
 But it is insufficient to refer a process to a special and won- 
 derful faculty, when it can be explained much more naturally 
 by a universal law of psychology, and shown to be an entirely 
 normal and necessary phenomenon of mental life. When 
 we transported ourselves into an unknown and distant region 
 of Bible History, or rather created it in our minds, there 
 came to the help of the new names certain familiar and similar 
 notions ; namely, the names and images of objects at home. 
 The names of sacred places, the ideas of persons and events 
 in sacred history, called up related groups of ideas (t. e., those
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 71 
 
 produced at some time by the immediate environment) and 
 united with them, until the two became thoroughly fused, and 
 formed a single group. Thus the new part that the narrative 
 contained was interpreted and digested by the help of ideas 
 already in our possession; and we must therefore credit 
 apperception with that which is usually ascribed to the 
 activity of the imagination. 
 
 Bogumil Goltz, who is so well acquainted with and ap- 
 preciative of child life, describes such childish apperception 
 in a very attractive manner. When for the first time, to 
 his great joy, he came into the possession of a variegated 
 woodpecker, brilliant in all colors, he imagined heaven to be 
 a wood and meadow in which there was nothing but tame 
 woodpeckers, which could be taken up by the angels in 
 their hands (Buck der Kindheit, 3d edition, p. 42.) ; like- 
 wise, later, he was accustomed, by the aid of his home 
 experiences, to picture concretely each city and country under 
 discussion in Geography and History. He says, " I saw 
 especially Jerusalem from the beginning always in the same 
 light, the natural scenery, weather, time of day and year 
 remaining the same; the streets were unpaved, but fabu- 
 lously wide and composed of hard, sandy soil ; the houses were 
 low and comparatively large, being separated from one an- 
 other by spacious yards;' an indescribably dreamy quiet 
 rested upon the whole ; there was no work, no manufacturing, 
 no police, ho trading ; all was in a state of pious, contem- 
 plative reflection in the observance of the Sabbath and 
 the worship of Jehovah." 
 
 At Easter when the snow was melting and the streets 
 of Konigsberg were flooded, "when all the fields far and 
 near were covered by a countless number of lakes, and all 
 the granaries and houses appeared in the water like a 
 northern Venice, I had a view of the first waters and the
 
 72 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 flood, of Noah's ark, and all of Genesis besides; I then 
 reviewed in mind and sense all the diluvian and ante-diluvian 
 stories, and the days of creation." 
 
 The author of this book cannot refrain from adding to the 
 interesting reminiscences of this friend of children a few from 
 his own youth. He was accustomed, just as Goltz, to reach a 
 clear understanding of the facts of sacred history by asso- 
 ciating distant localities and events with those at home. 
 When, lor example, the story of the creation was studied in 
 school, his childish fancy pictured chaos to be similar to 
 such a flood as was often caused by the Saale river at a 
 certain place, in the centre of which was a pond surrounded 
 by gloomy linden and willow trees. The mist that arose 
 from the water mornings and evenings was the Spirit of 
 God that hovered over the waters. On the shore of the 
 Saale where there were many reeds, Moses was exposed in 
 his little basket, while his sister in a neighboring field 
 watched the fate of the little fellow. 
 
 From the same stream arose the seven fat and lean kine 
 of Pharoah ; at the point where it was particularly deep, the 
 Israelites marched through the Red Sea ; there the Egyptian 
 army was swallowed up by the returning floods. Mt. Par- 
 nitz, rising rather abruptly on one side, appeared to me as 
 Mt. Sinai on which the law was given amid thunder and 
 lightning, and at its foot the people of Israel were encamped 
 in the desert (though fertile) valley of the Saale. The same 
 meadow in which the Lord appeared to Moses in the burn- 
 ing bush saw also the shepherds of Bethlehem tending their 
 flocks on Christmas night, and heard the song of the 
 heavenly hosts. I remember still more vividly the dark, 
 old stable it has long since been removed upon which 
 I fixed as the birthplace of the Saviour. 
 
 When the temple of the Jews was mentioned, I brought to
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 73 
 
 mind our village church; there the aged Simeon sang his 
 song of praise, and at the altar, where each year the 
 examination of candidates for confirmation was held, the 
 twelve-year-old Jesus disputed with the learned scribes. 
 The town-hall was first the prison, then Joseph's dwelling ; 
 the royal palace (a large inn) , in which he interpreted the 
 dreams of Pharoah, stood opposite it facing the public 
 square ; and the house of Potiphar was on the same street. 
 Joseph's brothers passed along this street and stood trem- 
 bling at the door of the town-hall as they were to answer for 
 the theft of the cup ; and here also was the spot on which 
 the brothers recognized each other with much emotion. 
 The dwelling of the high priest, Caiaphas, was a spacious 
 building, the guardhouse, whose large hall was formerly 
 occupied by sessions of the court ; Jesus was brought there, 
 and in the entry Peter denied his Lord. Naturally enough 
 Pilate lived just opposite to the high-priest's palace. As I 
 thought of Christ's cross as standing by a garden-wall upon 
 the brow of a hill, so I imagined His grave to be in a certain 
 yard near by. But the road from Jerusalem to Jericho led 
 along past the cross, for the man who fell among thieves 
 went down towards Jericho. A few steps distant, in a wide 
 path with some gardens on either side, lay the stone upon 
 which Jacob laid his weary head, as he was fleeing into 
 Mesopotamia. Then came the place in which I had located 
 the garden of Paradise. Adam and Eve wandered about in 
 it ; in the centre stood the tree of knowledge, and the guilty 
 couple fled behind, yonder bush when God reminded them 
 of His commandment. From this point one could see the 
 Galgenberg, where Cain slew his brother; the Birkenhaiu, 
 where Isaac was to have been sacrificed ; and in the distant 
 horizon Mt. Nebo appeared, from which Moses looked over 
 into the promised land.
 
 74 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 These recollections show that the child's conception 
 compresses within narrow bounds many facts that are 
 widely separated in time and space a truth which is 
 1'ntiivly in accord with the limited circle of ideas that he 
 brought with him into the school. To be sure, it must be 
 admitted that an understanding of some of the stories was 
 not acquired in the best way, that the Bible pictures received 
 a local coloring and many non-essential and incorrect char- 
 acteristics. 
 
 But all these defects are counterbalanced by the single 
 fact that the new knowledge was apperceived with certainty, 
 that the words of the teacher did not remain empty, but 
 produced brightly colored, living pictures in the child's 
 mind. It is related of Byron, that his conception of the 
 classical regions of the Homeric poems, which he secured by 
 viewing them in person, was far inferior in impressiveness 
 and beauty to that which he had already formed of those 
 places by the help of his home environment. Thus we see 
 that, at times, apperception may be so vivid that it at least 
 equals perception in the clearness and force of ideas. But 
 whatever the childish mind has once created so uncon- 
 sciously for of course reference is not here made to any 
 conscious seeking on his part after corresponding pictures 
 from his environment has impressed itself too deeply 
 upon him to allow reflection at a later time to alter and cor- 
 rect everything. Of course by means of illustrations, de- 
 scriptions, and study, one's youthful apperceptions may be 
 corrected ; but when I examine carefully to determine which 
 mental pictures rise into my consciousness involuntarily, 
 first, and most readily, at the mention of the Garden of 
 Eden, Golgotha and Jerusalem, I find that they are my 
 earliest notions, and that later knowledge lias succeeded in 
 changing them but little.
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 75 
 
 An historical narrative or geographical description requires 
 of the pupil not only a vivid representation of distant places, 
 but also a clear idea of strange customs, of strange 
 persons and their experiences, their thoughts and emotions. 
 Here again the child must look within himself in order to fill 
 the words that are heard with a concrete meaning. This 
 happens when he looks back over his own experience, 
 such as his home in the main has furnished him, over the 
 subjective and objective events of his life, and by their help 
 transports himself into historical times and conditions, among 
 strange customs and usages. 
 
 The more scanty and inadequate these apperceiving ideas 
 are, the more defective and na'ive will be his comprehension 
 of the newly acquired information. Misconceptions are 
 certain to occur, as when one boy thought that God made 
 Adam out of potato-dumplings, and that the Angel of 
 Paradise held a large Schwarle (i. e., board, instead of 
 Schwert, meaning sword) in his hand. Or the apperceptions 
 are altogether too childish, as when a pupil thought that 
 Jacob might easily have been run over by the cars while 
 sleeping under the open sky, and that Joseph became the 
 Egyptian king's "apprentice" when he was elevated by 
 him to office. 
 
 It will always be especially difficult to arouse apperceiving 
 ideas for the thoughts and emotions of historical characters. 
 In such cases it is best to direct the child's attention to his 
 own inner experiences, and allow him to linger in thought 
 upon those moments when he was moved with anxiety and 
 dread, or fear and repentance ; when the voice of conscience 
 lifted itself to punish, or the satisfaction arising from a kindly 
 and effective deed rejoiced the heart. An occasional quiet 
 return into one's own inner world, such as history, when 
 taught with tact, can cause, not only teaches us to under-
 
 76 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 stand better what passes in the souls of others, but leads 
 gradually also to right self-knowledge, which is the first 
 condition of self-control. 
 
 Thus those numerous ideas and experiences which the 
 child has secured mainly through apperception are them- 
 selves in turn active in instruction as apperceiving agents. 
 They give the proper tone and meaning to the words of the 
 teacher; they are the material by means of which the 
 youthful mind gradually builds for itself a new historical 
 world : truly a great work ! 
 
 But soon books come to the teacher's aid ; the child must 
 learn to comprehend fully new thoughts from the printed 
 page without assistance from others. That is a far more 
 difficult task than to convert oral language into mental 
 images. For -all reading involves a threefold apperception; 
 first, a series of letters or word-pictures must be perceived, 
 or recognized as more or less familiar ; then the correspond- 
 ing series of sounds ; and third, the group of ideas for 
 which these symbols stand. When we perform these three 
 acts of recognition simultaneously, and associate them with 
 one another, we understand what we read. The child, at 
 the age under consideration, is not so successful in such 
 efforts as the adult. As a rule he is not able to recognize 
 the three series at one time, and when he nevertheless 
 attempts it, while he is directing his attention to the mean- 
 ing of the words, frequently the result is "guessing," which 
 is a false apperception of the series of letters and sounds. 
 He usually prefers, therefore, to concentrate his mind 
 upon the sounds first, and reads the words without fully 
 comprehending their connection. The apperception of most 
 of the content follows later; ?. <?., the child must look once 
 more at the words and examine them with special reference 
 to their meaning, if the thought is to be entirely revealed to
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 77 
 
 him. He cannot, then, immediately understand a story 
 which he himself reads ; whereas the same words, if related 
 by the teacher, are instantly grasped. It is the privilege 
 only of older children to perceive readily and easily the 
 meaning of what they read. 
 
 From what has preceded, we see that the more thorough 
 the comprehension of the numerous new ideas is, i. e., the 
 more correct and numerous the connections into which the 
 related contents of the mind have entered, the easier becomes 
 the logical arrangement and perfecting of the knowledge 
 acquired. The indistinct general notions, which, as we saw, 
 being favored by the names of genera, are characteristic of 
 childhood, receive now sharper outlines and a richer content. 
 Let us explain the origin of these general notions clearly 
 by an example. 
 
 As long as the child in early youth saw only red centi- 
 folias he imagined all roses to be red and full. Then in a 
 field somewhere he found a bush with similar flowers, but 
 they were neither red nor filled. That seemed strange to 
 him, and for a moment he was in doubt whether he had 
 before him an entirely new plant, or one already familiar. 
 For, the related idea of the centifolia, which was repro- 
 duced by the new observation, differed from it in several 
 striking particulars. But however strange this may have 
 seemed at first, there were decidedly more characteristics in 
 which the two agreed than in which they differed. And 
 therefore the mind (in accordance with its peculiar nature, 
 which everywhere struggles for unity and order among its 
 ideas) emphasized, as the essential part, that which was 
 common to the two perceptions, and classed the new under 
 the old as being similar to it. The child expressed this con- 
 clusion in the words, " That is a rose too, but a white and 
 simple one." In spite of several points of contrast, he
 
 78 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 united the new perception with the old idea, and applied the 
 name rose to the former because it had too much in common 
 with the latter to allow their complete separation. Had the 
 name of the genus, rose, been given to him simultaneously 
 with the new perception, the apperception would have taken 
 place much more easily and quickly. But at all events it 
 was not the result of a special act of the will, of consciously 
 directed thought ; the mind created rather the general notion 
 while involuntarily observing the content of the individual 
 notions that were fused. Further, neither of the two was 
 able to assert a superiority over the other ; wherefore it re- 
 mains doubtful which should be regarded as subject, which 
 as object of the apperception. 
 
 But this process of apperception will be altered now, since 
 in the course of time the child's experience and mental 
 capacity increase; for he becomes acquainted with new 
 species of the rose, for instance the yellow and the moss 
 roses, and observes them more minutely. Every new sim- 
 ilar perception is then welcomed by a related group of ideas 
 in the general concept, which is superior to the new percep- 
 tion in the extent and strength of its connections. When a 
 perception joins such a group, it surrenders its independent 
 existence in order to enrich the apperceiving notions with 
 one or more new properties. Each one of these new ob- 
 servations, therefore, enriches and perfects the concept ro.se, 
 and when the latter contains most of the essential character- 
 istics, the child may be said to have the concept rose. It 
 contains many non-essentials also, but, on account of the 
 differences among them, they cannot rise to the degree of 
 clearness attained by those elements common to all the 
 notions of the genus. While in early youth this fusion of a 
 new idea with a related older one took place wholly uncon- 
 sciously (although it was in obedience to certain laws of
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 79 
 
 logic), it now becomes a conscious act. Some reflection 
 precedes the apperception : the child draws conclusions, lie 
 passes judgments, he thinks. The final judgment is the 
 simplest expression of the completed apperception. When 
 he says, "That too (i. e., the moss rose) is a rose," it 
 means simply that the subject (namely, the new perception 
 which at first could not be classed) has been apperceived by 
 the predicate (the notion rose, already at hand). We shall 
 later on consider the fact that concepts arising in this man- 
 ner possess, on account of their greater perfection, far 
 greater apperceiving power than the indistinct general no- 
 tions of childhood. 
 
 While the child is growing intellectually, he is making 
 progress ethically as well. We have already seen that the 
 ruling sphere of ideas and emotions determines in the main 
 the moral insight of the human being. He usually judges 
 his own moral worth and that of others according to what 
 he himself loves, or what he wishes and longs for for him- 
 self. There is, therefore, no doubt but that in early youth, 
 as well as in infancy, the feelings and interests of sense 
 influence to a considerable extent the moral consciousness 
 of man. Indeed they can become the one controlling group 
 of ideas among bad and uneducated children ; with these 
 anything is permissible that pleases. On the other hand, 
 in the case of the well-trained child, they are subordinated 
 more and more to the ideal example of the parents. He no 
 longer follows blindly this authority, to which he has always 
 been subject. But by comparing them with other persons 
 and with his own imperfect being, he comes gradually to 
 feel an unlimited reverence for his parents, which makes 
 voluntary obedience toward them a duty, and causes their 
 example to be regarded as a model. And soon other 
 authority is associated with theirs; namely, that of teachers,
 
 80 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 near relatives, leaders among school companions, and masters 
 with their servants. Especially in sacred history does God, 
 the Perfect and Just One, appear as the highest authority, 
 whose supreme will and control impress themselves indelibly 
 upon the pupil's mind. These fire the examples which especially 
 determine his moral conceptions, and hence control his apper- 
 ception on moral questions. They are vividly in mind when 
 he acts; they are his conscience. Not as though he were 
 unable to distinguish for himself what is good or bad. He 
 knows unworthy deeds or worthy motives in themselves 
 very well, entirely apart from all thought of what his parents, 
 or teacher, or God, would say on the matter. But such pure, 
 independent moral feelings and judgments do not appear 
 at this stage of development in the abstract, but rather in 
 connection with certain model examples. Just as the 
 thought of a child in all spheres of knowledge deals in part 
 with very imperfect general pictures, not with general con- 
 cepts, so in the field of ethics Jiis morality does not show itself 
 effective in the abstract form of the idea, the principle, 
 but in the concrete form of the ideal. When one observes 
 closely what guides the moral judgment in early youth, 
 one finds that, in most cases, the example of some real 
 person closely related to the child consciously or uncon- 
 sciously exerts a deciding influence in the apperception, and 
 thus largely determines the will. 
 
 We come now to the third stage of development, which 
 covers a riper age of boys and girls, the period from eleven 
 to fourteen years of age. Here the processes in apperception 
 are much the same as those we have already seen in the 
 preceding stage. For instruction still continues to enlarge 
 the child's experience by means of words, pictures and the 
 presentation of new concrete objects. But the demands 
 now made upon his ability are raised. The world of forms
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 81 
 
 and symbols comes more to the front than heretofore, and 
 these the pupil is to fill with ideas and thoughts from his 
 mental store. If he studies intelligently he must see the 
 figures in Drawing and Geometry as real bodies, and learn 
 to interpret mere outlines differently according to their 
 shading and color. The familiar formula of Geometry, 
 " Imagine a line drawn," etc., involves a somewhat difficult 
 process of apperception. Geography imposes an equally 
 difficult task upon the pupil when it requires him to translate 
 the mute symbols of the map into fresh-colored images of 
 mountain ranges and broad plains, of snow-capped mountain 
 peaks and deep valleys, of rivers and lakes and the bound- 
 less ocean, of villages and cities, fortifications and all the 
 various objects of human interest. The thought-studies rely 
 more than heretofore on mere words to produce new ideas 
 and knowledge, and it is the pupil's duty to bring to bear 
 the best he can from within himself ; i. e. , through his inner 
 perceptions to put meaning into the words he hears, or, as 
 has been well said, to follow the teacher's discourse by the 
 help of the imagination. 
 
 And likewise, when reading, the pupil must now learn to 
 apperceive the thought at the same time with the printed 
 symbols, to read while thinking and to understand while 
 reading. He shows himself better and better prepared to 
 meet such a great demand for apperceiving ability ; for the 
 ideas which now stand at his disposal for the comprehension 
 of the new matter are much more numerous and correct than 
 in the former stages. Also many of his concrete notions have 
 become condensed into clear concepts and united into groups 
 and series. This more closely associated and richer store 
 of knowledge is eager for employment, and shows itself 
 effective with every new related perception. It not only 
 sharpens the senses so that they observe what easily remains
 
 82 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 hidden to the untrained eye, but it teacJies also to compre- 
 hend more correctly, reasonably and rapidly. By the help 
 of the apperceiving concepts new facts find the right ex- 
 planation with greater certainty, and secure their proper 
 places in the thought-structure. Hence it happens that a 
 pupil in an advanced class observes a plant, an animal, a 
 natural phenomenon, with very different eyes from those of 
 a child in a beginning class, namely with eyes which are 
 the result of scholastic knowledge. He is able to apperceive 
 not only more forcibly and comprehensively, but also more 
 correctly. Whereas he was subjective and fanciful in his 
 interpretation, he has now become more objective and reason- 
 able. This change betrays itself in all fields of knowledge 
 by his critical attitude towards new impressions. "The 
 na'ive manner in which, during the first half of his school 
 life, he accepted old legends and mere outward appearances 
 as true, gives place more and more to a different frame of 
 mind and behavior. The riper scholar does not believe 
 everything so unhesitatingly, but begins to ask for proofs ; 
 and where freedom of speech is allowed, he does not grant 
 immediately the reasons and proofs given, but, instead, 
 weighs them in discussions that are often spirited." * 
 
 It is true that critical, thorough and objective knowledge 
 is present in full measure only when one thinks in real 
 concepts. Still the foundation for such thinking is being 
 already laid at this age. In the previous periods of de- 
 velopment the mind reveals its effort to establish unity and 
 order among its products by forming its ideas into group 
 series ; now, since the quantity of knowledge threatens to 
 become unmanageable, it is active in uniting these groups 
 into concepts and general rules, into laws and principles. 
 The boy feels the need of giving greater clearness and unity 
 
 1 Pfisteror, p. 241.
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 83 
 
 to what he knows, and of advancing from uncertain general 
 pictures to clarified concepts. And so he exercises his 
 thought in the criticism of those general pictures which 
 his growing insight has shown to be inadequate. Such 
 childish definitions as, " One who lies tells an untruth," or 
 " An echo is that which returns again when it is thrown 
 against the wall," no longer satisfy the youth. He strives 
 now for a stronger grasp of ideas in order to meet the ob- 
 jections of his school companions. Under the teacher's lead- 
 ership he endeavors clearly to separate from one another, 
 fields of thought that are related, and therefore such as 
 could be easily confused ; also to become acquainted with 
 and to comprehend all the ideas under one and the same con- 
 cept, so that no essential characteristic of the latter may 
 escape him. He compares and distinguishes the material 
 collected, associates elements that have heretofore stood 
 isolated in his mind, or breaks up groups of ideas that are 
 incompatible with one another; he unites the similar and 
 separates the dissimilar, and all the time travels about 
 through various sets of notions with a speed and ease which 
 find their only explanation in the activity of apperception. 
 Similar or related members of reproduced series set in mo- 
 tion the thought-groups to which they belong and help pre- 
 serve their union, thus rendering a thoughtful, reflective 
 study of the same an easy matter. The apperceiving atten- 
 tion scarcely allows any notion that is within the horizon of 
 consciousness or beyond it to escape, provided it falls under 
 the general concept, or even appears to. It recognizes the 
 essential in everything, and instinctively anticipates that 
 which subsequent reflection establishes as correct. This 
 latter has simply to choose out the important characteristics 
 already partly known, separate them from the non-essentials 
 and unite them into a pure concept, or definition.
 
 84 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 Logical concepts in the strict sense of the word, i. e., such 
 as contain no non-essential, accidental property whatever, 
 are, to be sure, like the ideals that human effort never 
 succeeds in fully realizing. Even adults can attain them 
 only approximately in their thinking. * 
 
 Naturally enough then, children will seldom reach them. 
 They think chiefly in psychological concepts. But these can 
 receive such a clarification that they perform almost the 
 same service for knowledge as the logical concepts. And 
 it is just such clarified general ideas, sufficient for logical 
 thinking, that the boy is acquiring and can acquire, through 
 apperception, in all fields of knowledge. They, together 
 with the rules and laws to which, at a maturer age, he 
 
 This is in accordance with the nature of the concept. It is not, as 
 has been stated in our former editions, a new and separate creation pro- 
 duced by the soul, originating from the fusion of the common and essen- 
 tial characteristics of similar notions. "We understand, on the contrary, 
 under concept the entirety of the similar essential characteristics which 
 thought, passing through the notions rapidly, chooses from among them 
 and holds side by side in consciousness. It is not a new mental product 
 existing apart from and outside of the concrete notions; but it is 
 thought out each time, inasmuch as a person from among the numerous 
 ideas of the same kind (or also from only one idea) lifts exclusively the 
 essential characteristics into the centre of consciousness and endeavors to 
 isolate them from the others, which recede or withdraw (an attempt that 
 is always, of course, only partially successful). It is like a melody, which 
 can be easily distinguished in a piece of music of several parts on account 
 of special emphasis or peculiar registering, while, howevor, it never 
 ceases to form a constituent part of the separate accords. It happens to 
 us regularly, when we attempt really to think a concept and not simply 
 repeat the words of the definition, that we involuntarily glide down 
 among its individual notions, that we hasten through these quickly and 
 emphasize what is common and essential, rejecting the non-essential. 
 The general is not really separated from the particular, but only distin- 
 guished Irom it; for deep down in consciousness it is always united with 
 what is concrete. And for just that reason, because the concept is not a 
 finished product, but the result each time of a very energetic concentra- 
 tion of consciousness, it is so difficult to think it strictly in the logical form.
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 85 
 
 gladly rises out of the multiplicity of phenomena, constitute 
 the apperceiving agents through which, in the future, he 
 comprehends his new experiences more correctly and rapidly 
 than heretofore. The most important effect of instruction 
 is that it makes the pupil more and more capable of apper- 
 ception, i. e., independent thinking, and therefore less subject 
 to the control of outward impressions. With every new effec- 
 tive act of apperception that instruction superintends, he 
 becomes better able to protect himself from the forces of the 
 mechanism of ideas, from the power of mere fancies, and to 
 follow a definite purpose in collecting and concentrating his 
 ideas. Thus while the quantity of his thought has grown 
 larger, the energy of his thinking has also increased ; he 
 has acquired greater ability to hold many thoughts together 
 at one time, to examine critically large groups of ideas, and 
 has thus gained the most correct concept possible. 
 
 In the sphere of moral thoughts and deeds the feelings of 
 sense do not predominate to such an extent as in the earlier 
 stages of development. They are counterbalanced by 
 higher, spiritual interests that have awakened with the de- 
 velopment of a valuable thought-content. 
 
 As noticed above, successful apperception is the source 
 of interest. In proportion as the field within which active 
 apperception is employed is rich, interest will be many- 
 sided and the will manifold and strong. The child's mind 
 is now no longer entirely absorbed in bodily satisfactions, 
 but it begins to concern itself with higher things. The enjoy- 
 ment of well-mastered knowledge, of aesthetic forms and of 
 independent thought, enlarges the child's idea of happiness. 
 But however much these intellectual interests may pave the 
 way for a moral disposition and lend it support, the}' are 
 still not necessarily bound up with it. They may just as 
 readily serve a naked egoism, which cultivates virtue
 
 86 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 merely to gain advancement, asking first, what profit or 
 hinderance will it be to me? Where this disposition dom- 
 inates thought and effort, there can be no objective and 
 purely ethical judgment of one's own or of others' purposes ; 
 but in such cases apperception is mingled with selfish, pleas- 
 ure-seeking prejudices. Who would deny that the boy is 
 often inclined to such a view of life? 
 
 But a painstaking education tries to prevent such a 
 tendency from becoming a habitual drift of one's nature. 
 We have seen before how the living example of parents and 
 teachers may become such a power over the child, under 
 normal conditions, that he will find it difficult to resist its 
 influence. Those ideal characters also, drawn from sacred 
 and from profane history, with which instruction makes him 
 acquainted, may now exercise upon him more and more of 
 their formative power. And just this fancied intercourse 
 with historical persons is able, in a high degree, to generate 
 pure, moral thinking. So long as a child exercises his 
 moral judgment upon himself and his surroundings, the de- 
 cision is seldom free from selfish interest and is therefore 
 seldom objective. How easily and even unconsciously he 
 allows himself to be led by secret wishes or by a regard for 
 other persons. Very different is it when, in fancied inter- 
 course with ideal persons of antiquity, the child is impelled 
 to ethical perception and judgment. Those historical 
 characters are persons to whom he can do neither a favor 
 nor an injury, and they in turn have no power either to 
 benefit or harm him. Here the moral judgment can ripen in 
 perfect freedom, uninfluenced by other interests or by 
 reference to the child's own actions. Here the boy first 
 shows his inclination and capacity to estimate moral disposi- 
 tions objectively and trains himself to a pure ethical com- 
 prehension. In the historical world that now finds entrance
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 87 
 
 to his head and heart, he discovers a second power of 
 soul that gives direction to his ethical perception. But the 
 ethical types which real and fancied intercourse with ideal 
 persons present to him, are the foundation upon which 
 thought gradually builds up general requirements and com- 
 mands, as they have found classical expression, for example, 
 in the decalogue. With the aid of such general and uni- 
 versal precepts, which the boy has acquired and stored 
 away, he now apperceives his own action and that of others. 
 They are the rules to which he subjects conduct. But those 
 rules have not yet acquired for him the weight of principles. 
 For, however completely they may have found acceptance 
 with him, they yet remain to him, primarily, only the ex- 
 pression of the divine will, not self-given rules, but com- 
 mands. Behind all the ethical rules that he has recognized 
 as valid stands God as a power commanding reverence, who 
 maintains his precepts intact and for whose sake the child 
 incorporates them into his own will. " To have God before 
 one's eyes " with these words of the sacred text one might 
 summarize and illustrate the character of ethical appercep- 
 tion that is suited to a well-bred boy in our present stage of 
 culture. 
 
 At first the child's own body was the starting point and 
 centre of all his feeling and desires, but the youth learns 
 gradually to look upon his body as a part of the external 
 world, and with every fresh inner experience his self-con- 
 sciousness retreats more and more into the introspective life. 
 In his previously acquired ideas and feelings he now also seeks 
 his ego or self. This entire self-consciousness as the essential 
 basis of his nature he sets over against external impressions 
 and disturbances. 
 
 This transformation of the notion of the ego is carried out 
 most fully in the next period of development, young man-
 
 88 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 hood, which we must briefly consider. It is the period of 
 the domination of the sensibilities, in which mental states 
 arising from the feelings chiefly guide the person. The in- 
 tellectual feelings can develop in a much richer, purer form, 
 becoming stronger, and more permanent, because the con- 
 ditions in favor of them are present in a far different degree 
 than in previous stages of growth. Consider, for example, 
 the development of aesthetic feeling. The admiration of 
 beautiful forms appears quite early. The child, we saw, is 
 delighted with the harmony of rhyme and with the smooth 
 movement of measures. He is able to appreciate the charm 
 of symmetrical figures and objects, and to prefer a beautiful 
 face to an ugly one. In addition to this come the well- 
 devised plans of instruction for discovering and appre- 
 ciating the beautiful in the simplest sensations of space 
 and tone, in geometrical and plant ornamentation, not less 
 than in poem and song. But they are only isolated element- 
 ary aesthetic feelings that thus arise, not strong unified sum- 
 totals that take root in important well-connected masses 
 of thought, aud become stimulated in a greater degree by the 
 entire view of a work of art. That which gives interest and 
 pleasure to the boy in viewing a painting or an architectural 
 work is less the harmony of the constituent form-elements, 
 less the thought realized, than single unessential or accidental 
 parts which lie outside of the aesthetic judgment. The right 
 understanding of a work of art, and the deep and pure feeling 
 for its beauties, first disclose themselves to the youth or man. 
 Where the variety of forms confuses the boy's mind, the 
 trained eye is able to detect the law by which the whole is 
 determined ; it reveals fundamental forms that reappear in 
 the most varied setting, and shows harmonious construction 
 of the whole. So the master-piece of art enters conscious- 
 ness in the form of a clear and well-articulated total effect,
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 89 
 
 which, by virtue of its form, awakens a strong and elevating 
 feeling. But for this mental picture we are indebted only in 
 a small degree to the ear and eye, which convey to us the 
 sense-impression. Its existence is due rather to the power- 
 ful influence of all the memory-pictures that we have before 
 acquired from similar forms, and of the aesthetic judgments 
 and feelings that sprang out of a close observation. The 
 eye, which in observing a picture or a Gothic dome quickly 
 rectifies itself and separates the important from the acci- 
 dental, is guided by certain rules which it has previously 
 appropriated and is supported by an acquired efficiency in 
 supplementing certain serial forms from memory. Since we 
 recognize familiar or similar things in a work of art, the eye 
 need not lose itself in the parts, but may confine itself to the 
 chief characteristics. We thus apperceive the beautiful by 
 the aid of previously acquired aesthetic perceptions, and each 
 person's aesthetic sensibility is dependent upon his memory 
 content. l 
 
 This is true in a double sense of those works of art 
 which please not only because of the pure form, but for the 
 sake of what they signify or suggest. When we attribute 
 a thought-content to a painting or statue, or when we find 
 pleasure in the actions or sensibilities to which they give 
 ideal expression, we comprehend them in accordance with 
 our own store of ideas and feelings, and the aesthetic impulse 
 is dependent upon the degree of thoroughness and ease 
 with which the apperception of the beautiful is accomplished. 
 But this kind of apperception presupposes such a wealth of 
 knowledge ahd inner experience as one does not usually 
 acquire before young manhood. We have in mind not 
 
 The knowledge of this dependence of our sense of form upon revived 
 memory pictures lias led even to the formation of a new law controlling 
 the whole aesthetics of form.
 
 90 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 simply such master-pieces as Raphael's Disputation and the 
 School of Athens, or Kaulbach's Destruction of Jerusalem, 
 or the pediment group of the Parthenon, whose {esthetic 
 appreciation is conditioned upon numerous religious, histori- 
 cal and mythological facts, but chiefly upon all those works 
 of art whose beauty can only be revealed to a soul which 
 has known and experienced all those feelings, passions and 
 conflicts which find representation in these works. 1 
 
 Sympathetic feeling of joy or sorrow is, like aesthetic ap- 
 preciation, dependent upon the content of our memory, upon 
 what we have pondered and experienced in our own hearts. 
 
 But we can share the feelings of auother person. Since 
 they cannot be directly perceived by us, thej T must manifest 
 themselves by peculiar changes in the various physical 
 organs, through the agency of words, manners, gestures and 
 other external signs. The instant we perceive these, there 
 arises above the threshold of thought, in accordance with the 
 law of indirect reproduction, the notion of identical or similar 
 expressions of feeling as we have observed them previously 
 in ourselves; and frequently they appear with a strength 
 and life that cause us to imitate involuntarily the move- 
 ments of another. According as this group of ideas acquires 
 total or partial reproduction, it enters into a relation of 
 interchange with the signs of feeling that we have observed 
 in others, and as soon as the similar elements hi the two 
 groups predominate, they fuse together completely. Now 
 for the first time the mind, by the aid of the old group, is able 
 
 "The young man now interprets the voices of nature in a different 
 strain from that of his childhood and gives a different meaning to the 
 simple childhood's song of the swallow, and with poetic sympathy 
 follows the poet when he sings: 
 
 When I said farewell, when I said farewell, 
 
 The world was full and fair ; 
 When I came again, when I came again, 
 It had grown so poor and bare."
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 91 
 
 to interpret the new perception. The old ideas supplement 
 the latter, since by the analogy of experience we can con- 
 jecture what is taking place in the mind of another, when the 
 latter, for instance, blushing, drops the eyes or stammers 
 confused words ; we can tell what thoughts are storming 
 upon him in the moment when sighs are forced from him and 
 tears stream from his eyes. Now we understand the words, 
 manners, and gestures of another. There is but one step 
 more to sympathy. 
 
 The apperceiving group of ideas was previously the seat 
 of a feeling by virtue of the constraining or stimulating 
 conditions existing within it or in consequence of its value 
 for the ego. While this group of ideas is being reproduced 
 and strengthened by fusion with other new and similar 
 perceptions, the aforesaid constraining and stimulating re- 
 lations are produced anew, and the relations to the self are 
 recognized again, so that a similar feeling arises above the 
 threshold of consciousness. But it has a like significance 
 with the feeling of another person, since they are the same, 
 or at least similar notions out of which both spring. At 
 the moment when we understand our neighbor, when an 
 appreciation of his mental state is complete, we feel his joy 
 or grief ; we have sympathy with him as if we were touched 
 with the same cause of feeling. 
 
 But the way to sympathy, as pointed out in the foregoing 
 discussion, is through apperception. Without it there is no 
 appreciation of others' states of feeling. Where this is lack- 
 ing, the joy or sorrow of our neighbor knocks in vain at the 
 door of our inner life ; there remains no sympathy with weal 
 or woe. And now we understand why the child, which is 
 usually so inclined to share the pain of another, limits its 
 sympathy mostly to the narrow circle of its own nearest 
 acquaintance ; also how the boy can pitilessly and thought-
 
 92 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 lessly injure another's success, or coolly ignore his m-cd. \\Y 
 find it explicable that even well-meaning children are often 
 guilty of an apparent cruelty which is certainly foreign to 
 their nature, that they can play thoughtlessly beside the coffin 
 of a loved one without feeling the loss or understanding the 
 tears and grief of their friends. It would be an error to 
 infer a wicked and hardened disposition or a rude and 
 depraved nature, where sympathy with others' weal or woe 
 is lacking. In very many such cases there is only a lack of 
 apperception. One cannot put himself in the place of his 
 neighbor, since the latter moves in an entirely different 
 circle of thought ; one cannot sympathize with him because 
 one has not experienced what troubles or exalts him : his 
 feelings awaken nothing kindred in the soul of the observer. 
 But whenever the sight of a suffering or rejoicing neighbor 
 transports one vividly into the time of his own success or 
 misfortune, where one hopes or fears for himself what 
 happens to another, there a strong and living sympathy will 
 not easily fail ; there it constrains even hard hearts. In a 
 beautiful and fitting manner the immortal Homer, in a 
 scene of the Iliad, has vividly represented this psychical 
 process. Hector, the splendid hero, has just fallen before 
 the walls of Troy. No favor is shown him by his rival, the 
 fearfully angered Achilles. "Be silent and conjure me not 
 on bended knees, nor in behalf of thy parents, for no one 
 shall drive the dogs from thy head." Thus had he 
 darkly answered the petitioner and, without regard for the 
 distress of the despairing parents, he dragged the body 
 through the dust, visiting ujxm his enemy a treatment un- 
 worthy even of an iron heart. Daily he repeats the shame- 
 less deed, pondering how he may most completely avenge his 
 friend Patroklus. Then on the twelfth night there appears 
 before him the gray-haired father of Hector. While pray-
 
 THE THEORY ,OF APPERCEPTION. 93 
 
 ing for the body of his slain son, he reminds Achilles of the 
 aging father whom he has left behind in his distant home, 
 how the latter is even now, perhaps, hard-pressed by sur- 
 rounding peoples, and, deprived of help and protection, 
 longing for the joy of his age, his only son, as he waits 
 for his return. " Like grief has fallen upon me," continues 
 Priam, "and worse. Not only have I lost a son, who 
 protected the city and all of us, and the fifty sous who were 
 born to me, but even now I press to my lips the hand that 
 has slain my children." Silently Achilles receives the 
 words of the king. But as the latter speaks to him of the 
 father at home, a thousand thoughts rush through his mind 
 and awaken feelings of longing and sorrow. For he con- 
 siders how, according to the decree of the gods, he shall 
 never s*ee his home, how he is early to descend to Hades, 
 and will never provide for his aged father. And as grief 
 now enters his own soul, suddenly his understanding opens 
 to the grief of the suppliant old man. The same Achilles 
 who rejoiced so jubilantly at the fall of his enemy, who 
 heartlessly abused and dishonored the dead, knows now 
 how deeply the unhappy father suffers, who lies before him 
 in the dust. He feels in his own distress the grief of an- 
 other. The ice which enveloped the cold and even cruel 
 heart of the young man, is now melted away ; he weeps 
 with the king, he springs down from the seat and, lifting the 
 old man by the hand, speaks' to him these words of sym- 
 pathy : "Unfortunate man, of a truth thou hast endured 
 much grief of heart." 
 
 Thus pain and grief make the heart receptive for all ten- 
 der impulses and feelings. This is the blessing of sorrow 
 that the /which in success and pleasure is easily isolated 
 and subject to egoism, is expanded to the unselfish and 
 sympathetic toe, that it deepens the heart and plants in it a
 
 94 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 living sympathy. Perpetual sunshine and an unbroken suc- 
 cession of fortunate days would little enrich our soul-life ; 
 for as Ruckers says: "The stream flows turbid that has 
 not passed through a lake ; the heart is still impure that has 
 never known sorrow." 
 
 The more a human being has tasted grief in the school of 
 heart-trouble, and the more he has deeply experienced the 
 changes of fortune, the more easily and fully can he under- 
 stand another's state of feeling, the quicker can he rejoice 
 with those who do rejoice and weep with those who mourn. 
 For this reason the well trained young man will ever dis- 
 tinguish himself above the boy by the strength and variety 
 of his sympathetic feelings. 
 
 But this enriching and deepening of soul experiences (sen- 
 sibilities) is in the main identical with the promotion of moral 
 disposition, of will action. For it is in the feelings that our 
 interests, inclinations, desires and undertakings find root. 
 The more our nobler intellectual feelings grow and prevail, 
 the less can impure, low thoughts and inclinations manifest 
 themselves ; the greater the strength with which moral feel- 
 ing speaks to us, the oftener does the will follow it. lie- 
 sides this, with feeling the inner perception grows in vivid- 
 ness and power. The periods when those states of mind 
 prevail which are dominated by feeling, are also the periods 
 of quiet introspection and sober self-observation. Just as 
 the young man in the field of scientific knowledge has 
 learned to gather up and bind together his thoughts, so now 
 he is better able to hold fast, to contemplate and to pass 
 judgment upon the pictures presented by his own will and 
 conduct. And now when he applies to these the standards 
 which he has acquired in his intercourse with real and fan- 
 cied persons, when he apperceives them by means of the 
 ethical laws, as the purpose of his teachers and the will of
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 95 
 
 God have represented them, a living moral sensibility is cer- 
 tain to follow. Inner satisfaction will succeed when conduct 
 corresponds to the type and awakens a desire always thus to 
 act in similar cases. In the form of remorse, or a torturing 
 feeling of pain, on the other hand, there will be the attend- 
 ant conviction that his acts of will cannot stand in the 
 presence of his moral patterns, and the urgent requirement 
 springs up to be more careful in the future and 'to avoid the 
 repetition of such humiliating moments. To be sure, ego- 
 tistical ideas and motives, the consideration of one's own 
 sensuous comfort, the lower feelings and inclinations will 
 manifest themselves all too soon, in order to make excuse 
 for the mutually criminating ideas, to apperceive the present 
 case of conduct in accordance with selfish principles and in- 
 terests, and thus to give it another and more favorable turn. 
 " Necessity knows no law," "Each one is his own nearest 
 neighbor," "One must howl with the wolves," " When one 
 is in Rome one must do as the Romans do " these are 
 some of those maxims of worldly wisdom, which seek to gain 
 acceptance and indeed in many cases determine the valua- 
 tion of a moral object. 
 
 And yet the more vividly and feelingly the pure model of 
 his earthly and heavenly authorities stands before the soul, 
 together with the remembrance of all those cases in which 
 he has followed it with self-satisfaction, and the more his 
 moral judgment and feeling have been developed in freedom, 
 purity and strength in accordance with the ideal characters 
 of history, so much more wih 1 such experience stand forth 
 as psychical forces, as a power which works manfully against 
 egotistic tendencies. They will not always preponderate in 
 the moment of decision, but they will at least secure an au- 
 dience afterwards as the voice of conscience. And thus out 
 of such experiences, bound up with elevating or humiliating
 
 96 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 feelings; out of right principles, which spring from remorse 
 or from moral self-satisfaction, along the pathway of apper- 
 ception, gradually a rule, or universal ethical judgment arises, 
 which stretches over a whole multitude of the same or sim- 
 ilar exercises of will. But it will be set up with the firm 
 determination that it shall prevail as a law for our conduct 
 in all the future. A new temper of will begins therefore to 
 spring up, whose object and content is that rule, or rather 
 the corresponding command, which the young man once 
 learned to know and estimate as God's or man's will. But 
 now it presents itself to him, not as the expression of an- 
 other's, but as the content of his own will; not as a com- 
 mand, but as his own free determination ; not as a precept 
 that one can approve and then fail to act in accordance 
 with, but as a fundamental law that is obligatory for his 
 own action. In this way the young man gradually trans- 
 forms these external laws into his own maxims ; the knowl- 
 edge of an authoritative will becomes his own moral insight. 
 These maxims and principles, which we have seen spring- 
 ing up when occasioned and aided by apperceiving activity, 
 are in their turn the first among moral regulations adapted 
 to apperceive vigorously and easily kindred dispositions and 
 actions. For they acquire a high motive value from the 
 feelings out of which they spring and from the will which 
 supports them. They are the standards by which the adult 
 measures his own and others' actions. Through them we 
 acquire the faculty of quickly grasping new impressions in 
 the moral world and of responding to them with suitable de- 
 cisions of the will. With their help we observe and regu- 
 late our impulses and desires, and those wishes and inclin- 
 ations of will that spring from the psychical mechanism. 
 If one of them does not harmonize with the general maxim 
 and cannot attain to an equal motive power with it, it is
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 97 
 
 rejected as unacceptable. And now one gives up a wish or 
 an intention because he has reconsidered the matter; one 
 denies himself an enjoyment so as to avoid unreasonable 
 action, imposes upon himself an effort so as to escape an 
 inner disapproval. If, on the contrary, the individual desire 
 is in harmony with the principle in mind, it will be accept- 
 ably apperceived with the aid of the latter ; it also attains a 
 power and vigor it would not have secured alone, while on the 
 other hand the practical principle is strengthened and estab- 
 lished by the recently apperceived act of will. If the will has 
 reached its object, the maxim is a second time brought for- 
 ward with the question whether the actualized desire cor- 
 responds to its content. The result of the accomplished 
 apperception finds consciously a very strong expression in 
 those agreeable or disagreeable feelings which we learned 
 above to recognize as inner satisfaction or remorse. 
 
 Apperception is accordingly the first condition for self- 
 criticism and self-mastery. In that moral principles are 
 employed in apperception, they become the defenders of the 
 sensibilities of the soul, which endeavor to protect it against 
 hostile assaults such as are not infrequently attempted by 
 the passions and secret impulses, or by violent and sudden 
 overthrows. If these maxims are gathered into a system 
 that expands over the whole activity of the will, if again 
 they are subordinated and held together by certain universal 
 superior principles, as the single notion is held by the gen- 
 eral concept, then the inner life of the person acquires that 
 seal of unity which is denominated character. Then a 
 circle of moral ideas acquires mastery in such a way as to 
 make itself felt in apperception, not only now and then, as 
 at church and on solemn occasions, but always and every- 
 where, and as a secret power able to direct our action. 
 
 This group of ideas, standing at all times close to con-
 
 98 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 sciousness, attended by strong feelings and acts of will, 
 takes still deeper root and works with still greater certainty 
 the more it is supported and permeated by a religious 
 temper. He who seeks the origin of moral ideas in that 
 highest and most venerated Being who first willed them, 
 will not hearken to them without looking up reverently to 
 God, the only perfect ideal of a morally free person, from 
 whom power and courage descend to him in the battle 
 against evil. For him the ethical ideals found in God and 
 in his Son, sent for our purification, acquire personal life, so 
 that they determine his will-action more strongly and deeply 
 with all the power of concrete reality. In him the enthu- 
 siasm for moral ideas is changed into an inner love for the 
 highest ideal, and obedience to self-chosen maxims is 
 changed more and more into a free and willing obedience 
 to the highest lawgiver. Of him who apperceives his will- 
 actions and conduct in the spirit of such prevailing thought- 
 centers and dispositions, the Scripture says: "He has God 
 before his eyes and in his heart." He approximates moral 
 freedom, that ideal which the youth seldom indeed, and the 
 man only in a limited degree, can attain. 
 
 Let us look back again at the results of our investigation. 
 We observed first what essential services apperception per- 
 forms for the human mind in the acquisition of new ideas, 
 and for what an extraordinary easement and unburdening the 
 acquiring soul is indebted to it. Should apperception once 
 fail, or were it not implied in the very nature of our minds, 
 we should in the reception of sense-impressions daily ex- 
 pend as much power as the child in its earliest years, since 
 the perpetually changing objects of the external world would 
 nearly always appear strange and new. We should gain the 
 mastery of external things more slowly and painfully, and 
 arrive much later at a certain conclusion of our external ex-
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 99 
 
 perience than we now do, and thereby remain perceptibly be- 
 hind in our mental development. Like children with their A 
 B C, we should be forced to take careful note of each word, 
 and not as now allow ourselves actually to perceive only a few 
 words in each sentence. In a word, without apperception, 
 our minds, with strikingly greater and more exhaustive 
 labor, would attain relatively smaller results. Indeed, we are 
 seldom conscious of the extent to which our perception is 
 supported by apperception ; of how it releases the senses from 
 a large part of their labor, so that in reality we listen usually 
 with half an ear or with a divided attention ; nor, on the other 
 hand, do we ordinarily reflect that apperception lends the 
 sense organs a still greater degree of energy, so that they 
 perceive with greater sharpness and penetration than were 
 otherwise possible. We do not consider that apperception 
 spares us the trouble of examining ever anew and in small 
 detail all the objects and phenomena that present themselves 
 to us, so as to get their meaning, or that it thus prevents 
 our mental power from scattering and from being worn out 
 with wearisome, fruitless detail labors. The secret of its 
 extraordinary success lies in the fact that it refers the new 
 to the old, the strange to the familiar, the unknown to the 
 known, that which is not comprehended to what as already 
 understood constitutes a part of our mental furniture ; that 
 it transforms the difficult and unaccustomed into the accus- 
 tomed, and causes us to grasp everything new by means of 
 old-time, well-known ideas. Since, then, it accomplishes 
 great and unusual results by small means, in so far as it 
 reserves for the soul the greatest amount of power for 
 other purposes, it agrees with the general principle of the 
 least expenditure of force, or with that of the best adapta- 
 bility of means to ends. 
 
 We have every reason, in this process, to recognize and
 
 100 APPERCEPTION'. 
 
 admire the wisdom of the divine Creator, who has estab- 
 lished such suitable provisions for giving freedom and fur- 
 therance to our mental life. 
 
 As in the reception of new impressions, so also in working 
 over and developing the previously acquired content of the 
 mind, the helpful work of apperception shows itself. By 
 connecting isolated things with mental groups already 
 formed, and by assigning to the new its proper place among 
 them, apperception not only increases the clearness and defi- 
 niteness of ideas, but knits them more firmly to our con- 
 sciousness. Ari'ERCEIVING IDEAS ARE THE bEST AIDS TO MEM- 
 ORY. Again, so often as it subordinates new impressions to 
 older ones, it labors at the association and articulation of the 
 manifold materials of perception and thought. By condens- 
 ing the content of observation and thinking into concepts 
 and rules, or general experiences and principles, or ideals 
 and general notions, apperception produces connection 
 and order in our knowledge and volition. With its assist- 
 ance there spring up those universal thought-complexes 
 which, distributed to the various fields to which they belong, 
 appear as logical, linguistic, aesthetic, moral and religious 
 norms, or principles. If these acquire a high degree of 
 value for our feelings ; if we find ourselves heartily attached 
 to them, so that we prefer them to all those things which 
 are contradictory ; if we bind them to our own self, they 
 will thus become powerful mental groups, which spring up 
 independent of the psychical mechanism as often as kindred 
 ideas appear in the mind. In the presence of these they 
 now make manifest their apperceiving power. We measure 
 and estimate them now according to universal laws. They 
 are, so to speak, the eyes and hand of the will, with which, 
 regulating and supplementing, rejecting and correcting, it 
 lays a grasp upon the content as well as upon the succession
 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION. 101 
 
 of ideas. They hinder the purely mechanical flow of thought 
 and desire, and our involuntary absorption in external im- 
 pressions and in the varied play of fancy. We learn how 
 to control religious impulses by laws, to rule thoughts by 
 thoughts. In the place of the mechanical, appears the reg- 
 ulated course of thinking ; in the place of the psychical rule 
 of caprice, the monarchical control of higher laws and prin- 
 ciples, and the spontaneity of the ego as the kernel of the per- 
 sonality. By the aid of apperception, therefore, we are lifted 
 gradually from psychical bondage to mental and moral free- 
 dom. And now when ideal norms are apperceivingly active 
 in the field of knowledge and thought, of feeling and will, 
 when they give laws to the psychical mechanism, true cul- 
 ture is attained. 1 
 
 1 " Only the skill to rise quickly in every emergency to universal 
 truths, makes the great mind, the true hero in virtue, the discoverer in 
 science and art." Lessing, Brief e. 
 
 We must regretfully deny ourselves in this place the discussion of 
 the important role that apperception has played in the development of 
 whole peoples. 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 SANTA BARBARA HOI I KCVK IIUDADV
 
 PART II. 
 THE THEORY OF APPERCEPTION 
 
 IN ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 
 
 As a member of a nation, the pnpil finds himself from the 
 beginning bound to a certain stage of civilization, which his 
 ancestors have transmitted as the result of thousands of 
 years of growth, which they have made through hard and 
 painful labor. To get possession of this inheritance must 
 be his first and foremost duty. For only thus can he him- 
 self exercise his own powers in the midst of a great society, 
 according to moral principles ; only thus can he contribute 
 his share to preserve, increase, and transmit the inheritance 
 of the fathers to the coming generations for still greater 
 perfection. To this end education first of all should aid 
 him. It must assume the responsibility of leading the child 
 to appropriate the most important mental treasures which 
 have been brought to light by the work of culture, so that, 
 starting from this basis, he may advance still further. It 
 should awaken in him a right estimation of these results of 
 civilization acquired by hard conflicts, and a right appreci- 
 ation for the duties of his time, that he may share in the 
 life and struggle thereof with true insight, warmth, and 
 power. In a relatively short time it must lift the youth as 
 far as possible to the height of intellectual and moral and 
 religious culture to which mankind, and especially his own 
 
 1C8
 
 104 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 people, have attained. How shall education accomplish this 
 high purpose? 
 
 Judging by the popular view, we might think that the 
 way to this result was clearly and simply pointed out : 
 let the pupil be taught the results of the intellectual labor 
 of mankind, and he will quickly surmount the heights of 
 culture. In the opinion of many people, language has 
 "the power of transmitting to the hearer, with the full 
 force of sense-impressions, the notions of the speaker and 
 of calling forth in the hearer the feelings of the speaker 
 with undimiuished strength." It is all too easy for the in- 
 cipient educator to draw the consequences from this doubt- 
 ful theory, and to have faith in the magical power of his 
 own words to generate and to call forth in the mind of the 
 child the very same ideas and impressions that he himself 
 connects with them. If the facts were really so; if, without 
 further care or effort, at the sound of a word the child 
 invariably received the corresponding idea of a thing, then 
 nothing would be easier than to teach and train. It would 
 be sufficient for a teacher merely to ponder a subject of in- 
 struction thoroughly and to give expression to his thoughts 
 in a clear presentation, so as to help the pupil at once and 
 without effort to a knowledge both clear and deep. Then 
 forsooth the results of science, the materials of culture, 
 might be simply transmitted, as a jug is filled. Then one 
 might speak, not only of a certain class of recitations (as 
 has really happened) in which the pupil "has nothing to 
 do," but the same thing must be said of all of them. In 
 this case nothing would depend upon the understanding or 
 study of the pupil, but everything upon that of the teacher. 
 But happily this is not so. We saw before how the child 
 constructs no idea, whether it be given him through objects, 
 pictures, words, or letters, without bringing into exercise
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 105 
 
 the previously acquired contents of his mind. We dis- 
 covered that the little ones, in all that they acquired through 
 instruction, were thinking and feeling something peculiar to 
 themselves, that their original thoughts and feelings were 
 secretly running side by side with the words of the teacher. 
 The tension and the involuntary absorption, with which they 
 follow good instruction, testify to this secret activity; so 
 also do the bright glowing eye, and the lively sunshine which 
 gleams from their faces whenever the word of the teacher has 
 struck the right tone or has touched the deepest chords of 
 their feeling. It is further proved by the lively questions of 
 the pupils, by their joyful assent, which perhaps breaks forth 
 in a hearty : " Yes, that's so ! " Whoever has observed in 
 such moments a joyfully active group of children, knows how 
 far removed their energetic learning is from a simple, pas- 
 sive reception, and that not the teacher, but they themselves 
 have the most to perform. He is convinced that knowledge 
 cannot Jbe transmitted, that the pupil must work it out inde- 
 pendently for himself. That is what the poet means when 
 he says : " What you have inherited from your fathers, yon 
 must earn again in order to possess it." 
 
 As has been already established, all mental treasures that 
 education and instruction should transmit to the pupil, can 
 be appropriated only with the help of a previous group of 
 ideas, and then only to the extent that the greatest possible 
 number of kindred ideas is brought to bear upon new facts 
 to set them in their proper light, and to bring them into the 
 best possible adjustment. " No one hears anything except 
 what he knows, no one perceives anything except what he 
 has experienced." This saying is true here also. What is 
 entirely new and can find no point of connection is either 
 not understood or only superficially apprehended. On the 
 other hand the best instruction is given when the words of
 
 106 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 the teacher stir the inmost thoughts of the child, so that he 
 is not passive, but wholly active. And so it remains true, 
 as we have already seen, that the most eminent characteristic 
 of learning is not to be denominated passivity, but activity, 
 that all learning is apperceiving. 
 
 Accordingly, it cannot be the duty of the teacher simply 
 to transmit to the pupil the material of knowledge, or to 
 communicate to him ideas, feelings and sentiments, but to 
 awaken, stimulate and give life to mental activities. He has 
 to reach down with regulative hand into those quiet, private 
 thoughts and feelings of the child in which lie his ego and 
 his whole future, that they may rise above the threshold of 
 consciousness and communicate understanding, clearness, 
 warmth, and life to instruction. In a word he has to make 
 provision that in every case the process of apperception is 
 accomplished with as much thoroughness as certainty and 
 judgment. Then not only will the matter taught be me- 
 chanically acquired, but it will be transformed at once into 
 mental power; it will contribute steadily, by awakening 
 thought and interest, to lift and ennoble the mental life. 
 
 The higher we set our requirements for the teacher, the 
 nearer lies the objection that we require what is unnecessary 
 and impossible, and that the process of assimilation can be 
 worked out in the child independently, without interference 
 by the teacher. We can grant this objection for those 
 cases in which the pupil in an exceptional manner ap- 
 proaches instruction in a favorable mental temper. We 
 admit also that very strong natures, which are distinguished 
 by unusual inner activity, are accustomed to supply without 
 the aid of others those apperceiving ideas which make pos- 
 sible the comprehension of a new object of study, since it is 
 a fact that a genius even with bad instruction, by his own 
 power, finds the right road to development. But no one for
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 107 
 
 this reason would make the exception the rule ; no one would 
 attribute to 'all children without exception what is the priv- 
 ilege of only a few gifted minds. 
 
 If such an over-trustful teacher, who believes that apper- 
 ception, as the rule, will take care of itself, could look into 
 the minds of his pupils while he is speaking to them, he 
 would be astonished often at what he would find there : 
 either no thoughts at all or entirely foreign ones, that go 
 promenading during instruction, and wander about in for- 
 bidden ways ; while in favorable cases, when the boy is 
 taken up with the matter, the teacher would often find 
 a grasp of the subject that differs as widely as the poles 
 from his own. This is a state of mind in which apper- 
 ception takes place superficially, or falsely, or not at all, 
 for the pupil hears only words, nothing but words, and 
 learns not from within outward, but is taught something 
 superficially. No wonder if the boy is dull or uninterested 
 in the school room, 1 when, as Pestalozzi says, "he plays 
 with words from his pocket," and when that which he has 
 learned mechanically is soon forgotten or when the hollow, 
 unsubstantial mental structure collapses after the school 
 life is over. 2 
 
 This result must follow when we do not open up the inner- 
 most springs of a child's feeling, or when we neglect to 
 
 1 The usual instruction, so little regardful of ideas already in the 
 pupil's mind, since it keeps in mind only what is to be learned, begins to 
 bestir itself about the necessary attention, when it is already lost, and 
 progress has been thereby hindered. 
 
 1 Herbart refers to the peculiar fact that many pupils show much power 
 of memory, fancy, and understanding in their own sphere while little of 
 these is attributed to them by their teachers. They even dominate as 
 the intelligent ones in their own circle ; they possess at least the respect of 
 their playmates, whereas in the hours of study they are incapable. Such 
 experiences betray the difficulty of making instruction take hold effect- 
 ually of individual development.
 
 108 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 awaken the apperceiving ideas for the new. Only consider 
 what is demanded of a boy when he is held hour after hour 
 to his task. He must forget a large part of the thoughts and 
 feelings which he brought into the school with him from with- 
 out, he must suppress the most choice and agreeable, the 
 strongest and liveliest ideas and impulses, so as to follow the 
 wholly new and strange notions of the teacher, or such as 
 are little familiar to him. Even when he is interested 
 in it, he dare not travel his own chosen road, following 
 up the ideas called forth by instruction ; but he is bound 
 within his class limit to a definite fixed progress of thought, 
 a certain average time of thought-movement, requiring an 
 attention, labor, and effort of mind often felt as a burden, 
 even by an adult. And now let one put himself in the state 
 of mind of a six-year old little one, whose world, up to the 
 present, has been the play-room, the street, the lawn, the 
 garden, the field, who has tumbled about in the fresh fields 
 of nature without care or aim ; how must he feel when he 
 suddenly finds himself placed between the four walls of a 
 school-room? Behind him are all the joys of the play- 
 ground, the golden sunshine of nature ; before him, the 
 earnest man with the serious countenance. And now he is 
 to learn tiresome letters and write figures that have no inter- 
 est for him no wonder if, in grief, he breaks out into tears, 
 the school-room seeming a prison to him. If the teacher does 
 not lay hold of the inner thought-treasures of the child, lead- 
 ing him back in thought to the paradise of his youth, to the 
 field of his inner and outer experience; if the teacher is 
 indifferent whether the child gets anything out of his words 
 or not, then he plays on an instrument without strings. 
 The apperception of the child must not and cannot be left 
 to blind, uncertain chance, and it must be regarded as the 
 highest art of the teacher and educator, rightly to induce
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 109 
 
 the process of mental assimilation in the pupil, and to con- 
 duct it to a sure conclusion. 
 
 From what has been said above concerning the conditions 
 under which mental appropriation takes place, it follows that 
 herein the instructor must direct his attention both to the 
 subject and to the object of apperception, both to the apper- 
 ceiving ideas and to those to be assimilated. 
 
 1. PEDAGOGICAL REQUIREMENTS IN RESPECT TO THE OB- 
 JECTS OF APPERCEPTION. 
 
 (Choice and arrangement of the material of instruction.) 
 The object of apperception consists usually of those new 
 and unfamiliar thoughts which the pupil has to master, the 
 subject-matter of instruction which he has to apperceive. 
 Of course this must answer certain conditions, if a thorough 
 assimilation is to follow. It is manifestly insufficient that a 
 subject-matter be selected in conformity with special scientific 
 or ethical standpoints, and then left to the skill of the 
 teacher as to how it is to be mastered. Anything, to be 
 sure, can be assimilated by the hungry mind of the child, 
 and, in the end, he would learn even Chinese if he had to. 
 It is not only a matter of concern that something be apper- 
 ceived, but that it shall take place with the greatest possi- 
 ble mental culture, with certainty, and without unnecessary 
 expenditure of power. It should be so learned that the. 
 culture-content of the matter may bring about the best pos- 
 sible effect. To this, a well determined selection and arrange- 
 ment of the subject-matter can essentially contribute, so far 
 as regard is had for the constant, and in the course of de- 
 velopment, also for the changing, peculiarities of child-nature, 
 for the phases of thought and effort which dominate at dif- 
 ferent times in the pupil. The teacher therefore has to 
 see to it that he does not treat of things for which there are
 
 110 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 not at hand sufficient points of contact in the youthful soul, 
 for otherwise there would arise the greatest difficulties for 
 instruction. Out of the whole field of learning, so far as 
 it is admissible in accordance with the moral-religious aim 
 of education, only those materials of culture and knowledge 
 are to be selected which are adapted to the child's temporary 
 stage of apperception. 1 
 
 The question, what these materials are, Ziller has attempt- 
 ed to answer by a precept as brief as it is comprehensive, 
 drawn from psychology and history : "The mental develop- 
 ment of the child corresponds in general to the chief phases 
 in the development of his people or of mankind. The mind- 
 development of the child therefore cannot be better furthered 
 than when he receives his mental nourishment from the 
 
 1 Instruction therefore follows a line of the divine pedagogy. For even 
 the exalted Educator of the whole human family is wont to reveal his 
 heavenly truths to men only so far as they possess sufficient apperceiving 
 ideas for them. When the time was ripe, when both Jews and Pagans 
 had prepared the way for an understanding of the new evangel, when 
 the longing for the Savior had been powerfully wakened, then God sent 
 his Son. Then only could his life and teaching unfold a deeply pene- 
 trating and world-historical influence. And does not the same divine 
 wisdom appear in the words of the Lord, directed to his disciples, 
 " I have still many things to say to you, but ye cannot bear them now. 
 When, however, the spirit of truth is come, he will lead you into all 
 truth." So long as his disciples were still entangled in the views of the 
 people concerning the promised national Messiah, the King of the Jews, 
 the divine Master could not entrust to them the whole secret of his 
 sending. Only when they had experienced so many tilings in the days of 
 Easter, which they had neither hoped nor feared, after they had seen the 
 Lord suffer, die, rise again and ascend to heaven, did they fully under- 
 stand his person, his mission, his destiny. Now they saw him in the light 
 of the Old Testament prophecies, apperceived fully what was at first dark, 
 as is so beautifully expressed in the speech of Peter on the day of Pente- 
 cost. 
 
 Compare also Goethe's words: "Man understands nothing but what is 
 appropriate to him. Hence the duty of saying to others only the things 
 that they can receive." Wilhclm Meistert Wanderjahre, Chapter III.
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. Ill 
 
 general development of culture as it is laid down in literature 
 and history. Every pupil should accordingly pass succes- 
 sively through each of the chief epochs of the general mental 
 development of mankind suitable to his stage of advance- 
 ment." The material of instruction, therefore, " should be 
 drawn from the thought-material of that stage of historical 
 development in culture which runs parallel with the present 
 mental state of the pupil." Now, of these chief stages or 
 epochs of general culture, classical presentations give us 
 sufficient and reliable knowledge. While we permit the child 
 to live through in succession these narratives, belonging to 
 sacred and secular history, we shall supply him in each period 
 of education with that material which is best suited to him ; 
 that is, for which there lie ready the greatest number of ap- 
 perceiving aids. In pursuance of this plan, Ziller has pro- 
 posed a mass of sacred and secular historical material of 
 ethical value which follows general as well as national growth 
 in culture. He claims that this material best corresponds to 
 the stages of apperception, and to the individual develop- 
 ment of the child, and that it essentially furthers an$l hastens 
 both. 
 
 A more pedagogically correct selection of the subject- 
 matter than this seems in fact impossible, so far as the 
 hypothesis from which Ziller proceeds is shown to be an 
 incontrovertible fact. Can we assert this concerning it? 
 Does there really exist such a far-reaching similarity be- 
 tween the development of mankind or of the people and 
 the individual development of the pupil, that upon it the 
 theory of the choice of pedagogical material can be based ? l 
 
 J To Richard Staude is due the honor of having first subjected this 
 question to thorough critical consideration. See Rein's Pad Studien, 1880, 
 No. 2; 1881, No. 2; 1888, No. 3. See also Sallwiirk's treatise: G?sin- 
 nungsunterricht und Kulturgeschichte, 1887.
 
 112 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 That the individual in his intellectual development repeats 
 the evolution of all mankind has been from earliest times a 
 favorite thought of minds prone to philosophy. When 
 Vaihinger, in his treatise " Naturforschung und die Schule " 
 (Scientific Investigation and the School, 1889), brings for- 
 ward as proof of this a crowd of witnesses, one receives the 
 impression that a certain principle, recognized by all, must 
 indeed underlie such a number of harmonizing testimonies 
 from our most prominent poets and thinkers. It is an ad- 
 ditional proof that in the realm of science, the law of the 
 congruence of octogenetic and phylogenetic series, according 
 to which every more highly organized being has to pass 
 through the stages of development of its species, has long 
 since enjoyed universal recognition. Does it not lie close at 
 hand to presume the activity of a similar law in the intel- 
 lectual realm also? To be sure the attempt to transfer the 
 biogenetic law without modification to the realm of intel- 
 lectual life "because there exists no difference in principle 
 between somatic and psychical development " * must be re- 
 jected for evident reasons. But when it is shown by close 
 psychological investigation that the development of the in- 
 dividual is bound, not only to the same culture-content which 
 mankind has produced, but also that the individual, like the 
 latter, raises himself 2 to ever higher culture-epochs (or stages ) 
 only by means of the apperception of that culture-matter, is 
 not a formal as well as material analogy between race and 
 individual development sufficiently proven? An analogy, 
 a similarity there surely is ; is there not possibly also a 
 parallelism between the two reaching still farther? That, 
 however, may be a matter of some doubt. For even if 
 the individual apperceives and appropriates the knowledge 
 
 Vaihinger, pp. 14-15. 
 
 1 See Capesius in Jakrb. d. Vereint.f. wittenchaft. Padag. XVI., 149.
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 113 
 
 and experience given in the progress of human development 
 just as the race itself did, it by no means follows from that, 
 that this must happen in exactly the progression in which the 
 culture-matter was gradually evolved. The case is rather 
 conceivable that the individual mind, avoiding the circuitous 
 and misleading paths of race development, apperceives the 
 experience of the race according to other, and to him better 
 suited, points of view. 1 
 
 There is the possibility that for him another equally valid, 
 and yet far simpler and shorter path of development to 
 the desired goal may be found, and that race development 
 and individual development differ from one another because 
 of various conditions. Certain facts in experience make 
 this indeed very probable. The bearers of human develop- 
 ment are always adults, who unite, in their consciousness, 
 the culture-content of their age ; the bearer of individual 
 development is, in the first epochs, a child. Even though the 
 latter may have many incomplete moral and religious intu- 
 itions, many feelings and thoughts in common with the 
 people of an earlier epoch he is, after all, always a child, 
 whose thoughts, feelings and aspirations are surely separated 
 by a deep chasm from the prevailing habits of thought of an 
 adult. It follows from the corporeal organism of the latter 
 that always and everywhere he will have other needs, other 
 
 1 Thus there was, long ago in history, a perfected science of logic before 
 the simplest events in nature could be successfully explained. But in our 
 schools the discoveries of Galileo will be taught before the creations of 
 Aristotle. " The study of electricity is almost entirely a creation of 
 more modern times ; the identity of lightning and the electric spark was 
 first known in the middle of the last century. The first electro-mag- 
 netic phenomena were discovered in the twenties of this century, and yet 
 we will teach our scholars both the identity of lightning and the electric 
 spark, and the universal phenomena of electro-magnetism, earlier than 
 the laws of centrifugal motion, for instance, which Huygens had estab- 
 lished even in 1663. " Capesius, P. 162-163; cf. 168-169.
 
 114 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 inclinations and habits, than the undeveloped child. Hut, 
 on the other hand, the child of our day brings with it 
 into the world inherited tendencies, as a result of which, cer- 
 tain intellectual activities become earlier apparent in it than 
 is the case with adults of the first culture epochs, and give to 
 its intellectual life special distinguishing features. In short, 
 it might be a very difficult matter to find an exact corres- 
 pondence between the epochs of universal human development 
 and those of the child. One will always find that the child 
 in some directions, for example, as regards certain thought 
 operations is far beyond the corresponding culture epoch 
 of the people, but in another direction, is far behind 
 (consider the practical experience proceeding from occupa- 
 tion), so that a uniform, corresponding progress in the 
 individual and the whole race does not take place. 1 
 
 In general, a far-reaching correspondence between the 
 race and individual development is, after all, only conceivable 
 by presupposing that the single mind, in regard to the chief 
 points, and under the same outward and inner conditions, is 
 gradually unfolded, just as mankind was, in its separate 
 epochs of culture. The boy who, for example, has entered 
 his patriarchal or nomadic period under the same influences 
 of society and nature, would have to grow up in the same 
 moral and religious habits of thought, and devote himself to 
 the same pursuits as, perchance, the members of patriarchal 
 families, if he were to live entirely and completely through 
 the corresponding culture epoch. And thus in each follow- 
 ing epoch, other conditions of life and development would 
 have to be offered to the child, if it were really compelled to 
 pass through in detail, and to experience in its own life, the 
 progressive culture of the whole race. That is impossible. 
 The child of our day is, once for all, bound to a definite 
 
 >Cf. Strumpell, Ptycholog. Padagogik, p. 189.
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 115 
 
 
 
 sphere of life, from which it cannot be separated. It grows 
 up in the midst of abundant culture, which very nearly repre- 
 sents the gain in culture of all previous centuries. It is sur- 
 rounded by far more complicated conditions of life than were 
 presented by the primeval age, by men who, as regards their 
 degrees of culture, exhibit the greatest differences in such a 
 way that almost every epoch in civilization is represented by 
 them in certain respects. The extraordinarily manifold and 
 quickly changing influences to which the child is in this way 
 exposed, by no means exert their force in a regular manner, 
 as, for instance, according to the historical point of view. 
 They are more likely to confront the child in motley order 
 according to the needs of daily life. His mind lays hold 
 now of this, now of that, and now again of very different 
 parts simultaneously, and, at least in the realm of outer 
 experience, does not advance in the logical order of a sys- 
 tem of study, or according to regular epochs. 1 In the city, 
 for instance, he usually learns our modern methods of 
 business intercourse, or our highly developed industry, earlier 
 than the simpler forms of human labor. He becomes ac- 
 quainted with the Christian belief and Christian manner of 
 thought even before the typical forms of previous religious 
 epochs of development can be presented to him. 1 But if, 
 according to that, the intellectual and bodily life of the in- 
 dividual is unfolded under numerous other conditions than 
 those of earlier human races, there must also exist a de- 
 cided difference between race and individual development. 8 
 
 1 Strurapell, p. 161. 
 
 Here we do not think merely of " tales from the life of Christ, brought 
 from the home to the school," as Thrtindorf, nor of "externals of Chris- 
 tianity," as Vaihinger gracefully puts it. But we mean that the whole 
 serious manner of life in a Christian family imparts to the child strong, 
 warm and pure moral-religious ideas which exclude experience of certain- 
 sense perceptions, standing lower down in the scale. 
 
 3 The attempt to withdraw the child artificially from given culture
 
 116 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 The psycho-genetic law of parallelism between the develop- 
 ment of the individual and the species, suffers accordingly a 
 similar limitation to that of the biogenetic law in the 
 scientific world. It is well-known that the latter holds good 
 only for the embryo in its prenatal state. 
 
 Free embryos or larvae, on the contrary, must adapt 
 themselves independently to the conditions of exterior life, 
 and can therefore not repeat faithfully the historic develop- 
 ment of their species. The individual mind of our day is 
 similarly conditioned. It is not an embryo, protected from 
 exterior influences, which repeat without disturbance the 
 race development, but from the beginning it is exposed to 
 the effects of an essentially different environment, in accord- 
 ance with which it has to conform itself. Consequently, 
 with the child, it cannot be merely a question of a develop- 
 ment in harmony with the progress of historical culture, but 
 it is also with equal right, a question of adaptibility to 
 changed circumstances, and no educational art will bring the 
 child to the point where its culture will run fully parallel to 
 the race development. In general, we indeed recognize a cer- 
 tain similarity between single and collective development; 
 but as soon as we enter into details, our analogy is, in many 
 cases, no longer tenable. 1 If that is the case, then, peda- 
 gogical proofs can be drawn from that analogy only in lim- 
 
 iutiuences in order to keep it in a certain definite culture-epoch is, of it- 
 self, prohibited as a vain endeavor. Neither Rousseau's Might from 
 the world nor Jean Paul's " subterranean education" can pass for accept- 
 able attempts at settling pedagogical questions. 
 
 1 Capesius, p. 182. 
 
 " The path in which we lead youth is not so firmly established in the 
 highways along which the human race has passed, that we, the educators, 
 may not have essentially aided in determining it by our aims and judg- 
 ments ; education may be a compendious repetition of the world's history ; 
 but we make the compendium in the spirit of definite ideals, which fill 
 us." Willmann, Didactik /., 74.
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 117 
 
 ited measure. It will give us many an excellent hint for me- 
 thodical work in more than one province of knowledge. But 
 it is not such a far-reaching or deeply-rooted principle, that 
 the study of the choice and arrangement of culture-matter 
 could be based upon it without further thought. 
 
 Herein we may perhaps have found an answer to the ques- 
 tion from which our investigation started, and a negative 
 one at that. But Ziller asserts, not merely an agreement of 
 race and individual development in general, but he insists 
 that the child shall pass through the various stages of each 
 epoch of culture development. Now, in opposition to this, 
 it might undoubtedly be asserted that what was firmly es- 
 tablished in respect to the development of the individual 
 taken as a whole, might also be applicable to a part of this 
 development to that of the child. Nevertheless there 
 might still exist even here especial circumstances which would 
 admit of another interpretation. Let us, accordingly, see 
 what facts Ziller brings into the field to support his assump- 
 tion. He asserts that the pupil, as regards his connection 
 with a greater community, passes through the following 
 epochs of moral development by the aid of instruction, and 
 must necessarily pass through them in conformity with his 
 nature : 
 
 1. He subjects himself, first of all, to authority in pure 
 childish confidence. 
 
 2. His own thoughts must then move freely in that sphere 
 which is ruled over by this authority. 
 
 3. He must subordinate himself to this authority volun- 
 tarily. 
 
 4. He must recognise and love the highest authority. 
 
 5. He must learn to work in its service toward the goal 
 of a moral and religious culture of his own inner being, as 
 well as, 
 
 6. For that of the larger community to which he will be- 
 long.
 
 118 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 Certain culture epochs of the general social development 
 seem to correspond to this development of the individual in 
 his relation to a larger race life, as is shown with especial 
 distinctness in the epochs of sacred history. 1 
 
 It is, first of all, noticeable in the preceding statement, 
 that there is an effort to set forth a correspondence between 
 general and individual development, in the province of social 
 ethics alone. For the remaining province of intellectual 
 life a similar proof has not been offered (expect a few weak 
 attempts). And yet, without such a one, the whole culture- 
 epoch theory hovers in mid-air, for the idea of culture 
 embraces more than the moral relation of the individual to 
 society. 
 
 And then it is subject to a very considerable doubt as to 
 whether it may be possible to establish firmly, within the 
 moral and religious development of the child, a large num- 
 ber of epochs, sharply distinguished from one another. A 
 careful, unbiased observation shows us, rather, how unsteady 
 and indefinite the youthful mind -life is exactly in this re- 
 spect, how it lacks evenness of character, and a steadfast will- 
 power. The beginnings of all possible ethical lines of con- 
 duct are present even early in life, and those things that Ziller 
 passes in review, one after the other, are generally limited 
 to no definite epoch at all, but are developed simultaneously. 
 Thus, the child that subjects itself, without reflection, to 
 human authorities, will surely, very soon, receive a presenti- 
 ment of the fact that its will is bound to the highest author- 
 ity, and if it obeys whether voluntarily or involuntarily 
 is it not already working here on the moral formation of its 
 inner life in the service of this authority? Furthermore, who 
 
 1 See the further exposition in Jahrb. d. F./. w., P. XIII. (1881), p. 118. 
 It is expressly stated here that the culture epochs appear to correspond to 
 the normal development of the child's mind.
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 119 
 
 could define, even approximately, the moment when the 
 pupil passes from the first to the second epoch of develop- 
 ment, since thus his own thoughts move voluntarily in the 
 sphere of that which is governed by this authority? Who 
 would be able to assert at what moment he subordinated 
 himself to the highest authority by his voluntary act? Do 
 not the most varied ethical lines of conduct often alternate 
 in him, just according to his momentary condition of mind, 
 according to the exterior circumstances, which render the 
 moral action easier or harder for him ? Do not, even with 
 the well-instructed and well-bred child, eudaemonistic and 
 strictly ethical sentiments dwell for a long time peaceably 
 by one another? This inability of the childish will, this 
 lack of uniform endeavor, does not permit us to recognize a 
 whole line of milestones and turning-points in the path of 
 the pupil's ethical development, from his sixth to his four- 
 teenth year. "We shall indeed be able to define, in general, 
 the direction of the ethical progress, and perhaps in this re- 
 spect (as in the sketch given on pages 66 and following) prove 
 an essential difference between the early and the late boyish 
 period. But the effort to fix upon six, or indeed eight ethi- 
 cal epochs of development for the eight school years of the 
 public school pupil appears to us to be a fruitless en- 
 deavor. 1 
 
 1 In an article in the Sachs. Schulzeitung , well worth reading ( 1887, 
 p. 128, etc.), Hartmann has attempted to prove at least four epochs of de- 
 velopment in the pupil, for the period from the sixth to the fourteenth 
 year. But, however valuable his exposition may be in detail, it still ap- 
 pears to stand too much in the jurisdiction of Ziller's congruence hypothe- 
 sis, for it to be everywhere true to the facts. "We are, at least, not able 
 to admit that precisely the ninth and tenth years of life is the epoch of 
 the subordination of the individual will to an authorized general will, and 
 that the pupil, in the thirteenth or fourteenth year, already allows him- 
 self to be directed in his action by fundamental moral ideas. Vogt distin- 
 guishes only three ethical epochs of development in the individual,
 
 120 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 But even if it be granted that, in the future, penetrating psy- 
 chological research may succeed in accomplishing the improb- 
 able, it is still a very great question whether it would define 
 those epochs exactly as Ziller does. For it is, indeed, a matter 
 of no doubt at all, that his social and ethical culture-epochs 
 reach, in part, far beyond the age of childhood, beyond the 
 school period of the public school pupil. How many men 
 there are who do not learn, in all their lives, to submit 
 themselves voluntarily to authority ! And does not daily 
 experience prove that love for the highest authority is, 
 as a rule, not the prevailing sentiment of boyhood; that 
 the instructor gladly contents himself, for the present, 
 with a less voluntary obedience on the part of the pupil who 
 leaves the public school, if only the idea of God has become 
 a power in his mind? That moral freedom, then, in conse- 
 quence of which man consciously and systematically works 
 for the completion of his own ethical culture, as well as for 
 the realization of an ideal human society, we shall never 
 hope to find in the boy, but, on the contrary, at best only in 
 the maturing youth and in the man. 
 
 Let us not be checked by the fact that the pupil can and 
 must grow into higher epochs of moral development, by the 
 aid of ideals. Certainly he can and should. But by that 
 we still do not say that the thoughts and sentiments with 
 which he thus becomes acquainted immediately predominate 
 in him, and must do so as a result of instruction ; that now 
 the pupil must have necessarily attained to the same ethical 
 
 which he characterizes thus : subjection to a foreign authority, voluntary 
 action under the authority of the law, and the independent authority or 
 government of ideas (Explanations to Jahrbuchd. V.f. ic.,P. XVI., p. 40). 
 His assertion that the third epoch "comes to view" already in the four- 
 teenth year becomes comprehensible only if we, with him, give to the 
 concept, epoch of development, a meaning totally different from the or- 
 dinary use of the word.
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 121 
 
 epoch of development by passing, in fancy, through the high- 
 est epoch of human culture. The degree of ethical reality in 
 the subject-matter for instruction is dependent on certain psy- 
 chical conditions which no education and no instruction can 
 permanently create. If, for example, the conditions for the 
 sovereignty of ethical ideas, or for the moral freedom, accord- 
 ing to our exposition given on page 76, etc., are first dis- 
 covered in the period of youth or manhood, then the most valu- 
 able subject-matter before this time produces only germs and 
 tendencies towards that moral constitution of will, but will 
 never be able to transfer the highest epoch of ethical develop- 
 ment into the period of boyhood, and thus essentially hasten 
 the culture of the pupil. It is not true that the public school 
 pupil passes through the same order of development as the 
 pupil in the upper schools, only in a more condensed form 
 that is, more quickly and probably earlier. - He does not 
 pass through them any sooner, or in any shorter time, but in 
 an abridged form, incompletely, in only a part of the stages. 
 That will not keep us from introducing him also to the culture- 
 matter of the latest epochs of development, in order that 
 they may contribute to the ennoblement of his spiritual life 
 according to the measure of apperceiving ideas at his disposal. 
 But herewith, we say to ourselves, that we may only expect 
 from the future, a more thorough comprehension, a deeper 
 ethical effect of the culture-matter when he is met by the 
 numerous inner experiences of the adult. What we mature 
 in the pupil is, under favorable circumstances, a new ap- 
 perception, or knowledge epoch, not an epoch of develop- 
 ment. 
 
 But could not those tendencies of the will, those traces 
 which a newly gained insight leaves behind in the moral 
 culture of the pupil, as soon as it is supported by strong 
 feelings, be already regarded as tokens of a new epoch of
 
 122 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 development? 1 But that would contradict all use of lan- 
 guage. For when we speak of the epochs of development 
 we think, first of all, of certain dominant groups of ideas, 
 which imprint their character upon the thought, volition and 
 action of any given period ; that is, of the sum total of new, 
 valuable culture elements which were unfolded and developed 
 in it. But it is assumed that the corresponding epochs of 
 development in the individual show a similar stamp of intel- 
 lectual life and aspiration, and at the same time present the 
 best and most numerous apperception aids to the compre- 
 hension of the universal epochs of development under ques- 
 tion. Indeed it can be positively asserted that the stage for 
 the most favorable apperception of the culture-content of an 
 epoch of universal development, is likewise that of the cor- 
 responding epoch in the individual. Accordingly an ethical 
 epoch of development will be determined by the kind of 
 moral volition which predominates in it, or begins to pre- 
 dominate. 2 Hence, the highest epoch of development has 
 been attained by him whose moral effort is practically free, 
 or tries to free itself more and more, from the eudaemonistic 
 reasons for action ; not, however, by the boy in whom ten- 
 dencies to such freedom are present for the first time. For 
 it is unquestionably true that more favorable conditions for 
 the apperception of the highest epoch of development are 
 present with the former than in the case of the latter; 
 
 1 See Vogt in the explanations for the 21st Journal of the Society for 
 Scientific Pedagogy, p. 30. (Jahrbuch d. V.f. w., P. XXI.) 
 
 1 One need not on this account, as Vogt, Ibid, p. 35., presents to us, 
 " represent the epoch by the image of a fixed point or a fixed surface, " 
 bat one may admit that the development of the individual is, in every 
 epoch, completed quite gradually and includes a number of years. In- 
 deed, as Willmann rightly observes, the growth of human power, 
 considered as a whole, is more like a gradually ascending path than 
 a Sight of stairs.
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 123 
 
 indeed, one may say, the most favorable of all. To this is 
 added another consideration. We saw thai, with the child, 
 indications of the most varied attitudes toward ethical con- 
 duct are shown relatively early. He need not wait until the 
 highest stages of religious instruction have been reached 
 to get a vague idea of the categorical imperative 1 , but 
 this conception can be awakened much earlier by the 
 unselfish, self-sacrificing action of the parents ; by the ex- 
 amples of noble characters, which impress themselves 
 indelibly on his mind, and thus leave traces behind in his 
 moral disposition. How could we, under such conditions, 
 distinguish one epoch of development from another, were 
 the different stages not characterized by predominating, 
 rather than isolated states of will ? The fact therefore 
 remains, that knowledge epochs are not also always epochs 
 of development in the historical sense, and that the boy does 
 not attain to the highest form of the latter before his four- 
 teenth year. 
 
 But if it be firmly established that, for most pupils, the last 
 epochs of individual development lie far beyond the school 
 period, and if the culture-matter for each individual epoch of 
 development is to be taken from the corresponding culture- 
 epoch of the people, then certain subject-matter, and indeed 
 the most valuable and indispensable, may not come up at all in 
 the public school. 2 That might be justifiable perhaps in the 
 province of theory, but never in the practical province of moral 
 
 1 The Categorical Imperative as developed by Kant may be stated as 
 follows : " So act that, through your own will, the rules of your conduct 
 might become universal laws. " In other words, if you want a test for 
 your conduct, universalize it, imagine that everybody acts in the same way, 
 then see if you could approve the result. Ed- 
 
 1 Ziller says: " The subject-matter for moral culture is expressly based 
 upon the correspondence between the two lines of development." AUg. 
 Padagogik, 2nd edition, p. 217.
 
 124 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 and religious culture. For even if the pupil of the public 
 school can not be conducted to the heights of art and science, 
 still nothing must be lacking that is essential to his recognition 
 of what is necessary for the happiness of the soul. He 
 must also be led toward the ideal of a pure moral character. 
 But here arises the necessity of his entering into maturer 
 thoughts and purer sentiments, into such healing truths, as 
 only the last and highest culture-epochs of his people have to 
 offer him. 
 
 We have seen that between the development of the in- 
 dividual and that of his people, or humanity, there exists 
 only a relative, not a complete correspondence. Education 
 will accordingly have to take into consideration the great 
 differences existing between the two lines of development, 
 and especially will it have to establish firmly the succession 
 of culture-matter, but not exclusively and without further 
 ceremony, according to the course of historical culture. 
 
 It is further proven that the moral development of the 
 pupil, even with the best of instruction, does not close with 
 his fourteenth year. Consequently the childish develop- 
 ment at least in the province of ethics passes through 
 only a part of the culture epochs, and for this reason, there- 
 fore, the selection of material for study cannot be based on 
 the asserted correspondence of race and individual develop- 
 ment, for otherwise the most valuable culture-matter would 
 have to be withheld from the public school pupil. 
 
 Against these conclusions it has been urged, in a 
 sorrowful tone, the consideration that "it is always 
 the public school alone that is kept in view"; that 
 naturally the public school in its limited scope can "ex- 
 hibit but very imperfectly ' ' the path of culture and that it 
 must consequently treat the development epochs in part 
 too early. But from that the unreliability of the culture-
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 125 
 
 epoch theory would not follow. On the contrary, the theory 
 would have strict validity for higher schools where there is 
 more time at disposal. 1 
 
 In reply to this, we have the following to offer. If Ziller 
 in the exposition of his theory of culture epochs keeps solely 
 within the boundaries of the public school, it becomes the 
 duty of the critical examiner to follow him in this province 
 of experience, and there, first of all, to investigate the validity 
 of his principle. Indeed, it is here alone that his opinion 
 could be ascertained with some certainty, and the practica- 
 bility of his theory be tested on a given pedagogical subject- 
 matter. "We hold with Ziller, that the highest principles of 
 instruction must always be considered as universally valid, 
 equally applicable to all schools and ages. If, then, it can 
 be rightfully said concerning so important a principle as 
 that of the selection and arrangement of the subject-matter 
 of education in general, that it is really only applicable for 
 higher schools, the principle must appear inadmissible from 
 the very beginning. A principle that is perfectly valid only 
 for the upper schools and allows the work of the public 
 school to appear in so unfavorable a light, cannot be recog- 
 nized as the highest, universally valid, educational law. 2 
 
 But suppose its asserted validity were denied, even for 
 higher schools? According to Ziller, the subject-matter of 
 education is always " to be borrowed from that culture 
 development which is parallel to the pupil's present condition 
 of mind." 3 Ziller demands, that, wherever possible, every 
 
 1 Thrandorf in Jahrbuch des V.f. w. Pad., XII., 709. 
 
 *If, according to him, subject-matter is treated "too early" in the 
 public schools, it is, of course, not in its right place, and a sound peda- 
 gogical principle should not admit at all such premature work. But if 
 that matter can in reality be treated, then it has evidently nothing to do 
 with the theory of culture epochs. 
 
 Ziller, Allg. Pddagogik, 2nd edition, p. 260.
 
 126 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 culture-epoch shall be presented to the pupil at the moment 
 when his whole attitude of mind, natural as well as acquired 
 through instruction, guarantees an apperception of the new as 
 nearly perfect as possible." l 
 
 A given topic, therefore, should not be presented until 
 the moment when the pupil has reached the corresponding 
 epoch of development; for not until then will he, as we saw 
 above, apperceive most perfectly new thoughts and aspira- 
 tions. Not until this time is his stage of mental develop- 
 ment abreast of the corresponding culture-epoch. But the 
 highest stage of development, that of moral-religious freedom, 
 comes with most people in the more mature period of youth 
 or manhood ; a fact which, for evident psychological rea- 
 sons, will not greatly alter the best curriculum of studies. 
 For as long as the pupil still stands in complete outward 
 dependence upon others, his actions will be naturally caused 
 by eudaemonistic (even if not ignoble) motives ; as long as 
 no responsible occupation places him in the midst of the 
 battle of life, he lacks in great measure those inner experi- 
 ences, doubts and needs such as are presupposed by the 
 last period of religious development; in other words, he 
 lacks the best apperceptive aids to a final adoption of the 
 highest religious truths. 2 
 
 As a consequence, according to the strict requirements 
 of the principle, the presentation of the culture-epochs 
 would have to be extended past the period of youth, and un- 
 til then certain culture-matter would have to be kept from him. 
 
 'Thrandorf, Jahrbuch des V.f. w. Pad., XII., 109. 
 
 1 " According to the inner psychological nature of everything ethical in 
 character, knowledge and actions mutually condition each other; moral 
 maturity and elevation of spirit are never attainable without active, 
 personal experience of life. Not only for, but also through conduct, 
 is moral sense developed." Lazarus, Das Leben der tieele," 3d vol., p. 103.
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 127 
 
 Futhermore, according to Thrandorfs method, 1 matter of 
 the highest ethical epoch, the life of Jesus and the history 
 of the Apostles, would have to be treated at the middle 
 period of the upper school, and thus at a time when " these 
 phases of religious truth do not receive the full and conclusive 
 estimation due them," but could be apperceived only in 
 the spirit of the second stage of mental development. 2 
 
 Here, too, then, even if not in the same degree as in the 
 public school, there is either a premature presentation of 
 culture-matter, or the necessity of withholding it from the 
 pupil until past the school period. This shows us quite 
 plainly that a strict carrying out of the culture-epochs is 
 not possible in any of the existing schools, because the 
 pupil does not pass through so many epochs of development 
 that the matter of the separate culture stages could ever 
 be added to a related, that is, the corresponding individual 
 epoch. And only in so far as one gives up this require- 
 ment which is, to be sure, the essence of Ziller's theory 
 will that theory ever be recognized as applicable. The 
 thought of arranging the subject-matter of instruction in 
 genetic order must be regarded, not as a sole and universally 
 valid principle, but one to be taken into account along 
 with others. 
 
 If, according to this, we cannot deduce directly the 
 child' s stages of apperception from a universal pyschological 
 and historical proposition, nothing remains but to settle 
 the question, propounded above, by a minute investigation 
 of the conditions under which the subject-matter of 
 
 iJahrbuch d. V.f.w. P., XX., 106. 
 
 1 To be sure, Thriindorf thinks that that would exactly correspond to 
 the different interpretations which Christianity has found in the course 
 of time. But the pupil is not here for the purpose of living over again 
 the retrogression of the human race from biblical to mediaeval Christianity.
 
 128 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 education will be apperceived in the best manner. 
 First of all, it is indeed clear that the matter to be taught 
 must on the whole lie close to the child's experience. 
 Since the latter has its root in the home soil, the material of 
 the studies must be taken from the national treasures of 
 knowledge, or at least stand in close relation to national in- 
 terests, sentiments and ideas. It must, to be sure, be sub- 
 ject-matter that apparently transfers the child into unknown 
 regions, but yet in reality leads it back to the realm of its 
 most familiar ideas, its daily needs and experiences. Such 
 a choice of subject-matter presupposes a thorough analysis 
 of the sphere of national thought, an exact knowledge of 
 the lasting and permanently valuable possessions of the 
 national culture. 
 
 But from the nature of the latter, all cannot be presented 
 to the child at every period and in like manner. We have 
 already seen how the pupil's gradual development puts limits 
 to the application of a pedagogical principle that cannot be 
 passed over with impunity. As the compass of its outward 
 experiences arrives at a certain completion only after the 
 work of years, so also does the breadth of its consciousness, 
 the power to grasp and retain ideas as a whole, increase 
 but gradually. The epoch of development in which the 
 child is able to think only in pictures is followed by an- 
 other iu which it really gives him pleasure to lift himself in 
 the abstract above the confusing variety of individual ob- 
 jects up to the universal law, that is, to rule and concept. 
 
 From the fanciful he advances to the real, from an imag- 
 inative to a sensible and intelligent conception of the world. 
 Many things that at first seemed to him historical facts, 
 later on become poetical images. Certain experiences and 
 conditions of mind consider, for example, the complex 
 of esthetic feelings that arises from contemplation of works
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 129 
 
 of art, the thoughts and feelings pertaining to the sexes, the 
 interest in difficult political questions of the day, do not 
 present themselves until the close <?f the youthful stage 
 of development. Thus the pupil's power of appercep- 
 tion is a constantly changing one, according to scope and 
 nature of the experience obtained outside the school, and the 
 stage of intellectual activity to which he has attained. But 
 instruction must pay attention to this law of child devel- 
 opment when choosing its subject-matter, in order that it 
 may correspond to the changing power of conception, to the 
 experience and interest of the pupil. Matter must not be 
 offered, the comprehension of which demands certain necessary 
 outer or inner experiences which are at the time still wanting 
 and must be wanting, or the form of which presupposes a 
 higher and more mature intellect than the pupil possesses. It 
 must, however, first of all and principally, treat of that which 
 lies nearest to the experience of the child. It must correspond 
 to the epoch of mind arrived at, in order by means of this 
 subject-matter, gradually to lift the child above that epoch. 
 
 However important in general the foregoing didactic regu- 
 lations for the choice of matter for instruction are, they 
 evidently do not attain to the solution of the question as to 
 what portion of instruction is to be allotted to the separate 
 school years, and as to how this should be divided and ar- 
 ranged for the whole period of school life. If we take into 
 consideration merely the fact of the development of the 
 child's mind, we gain for the period from the sixth to the 
 fourteenth year, not the desired eight epochs of apperception, 
 but at the most only two. This fact suggests, however, that 
 these various epochs do not depend exclusively upon the un- 
 changeable factors given in the child's development, but fully 
 as much upon the nature of the subject-matter offered by in- 
 struction. They are not something exclusively innate, but
 
 130 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 can be, in a measure at least, artificially produced. Or still 
 better, within the stages of the child's mind that are determined 
 by fixed laws, instruction is able to create epochs of apper- 
 ception, in accordance with the given psychical conditions, 
 just as surely as the ability to apperceive depends essentially 
 upon the range of thought already acquired. The power of 
 apperception, however, is produced through instruction by 
 means of such an arrangement of the teaching matter as will 
 make the sequel intelligible from what precedes, u so that 
 every previous subject best prepares the mind of the pupil 
 for that which succeeds more or less closely." 1 That is 
 brought about most naturally and perfectly by following the 
 historical principle, by grouping the material with reference 
 to the historical development which a definite phase of 
 national thought has taken. " Especially does what goes 
 before in a given subject contain the key to what follows, 
 and following up the development of a subject leads most 
 simply to an understanding of it." 2 While the child follows 
 the progress of national culture or the facts of sacred his- 
 tory from epoch to epoch, it receives indeed in each of these 
 stages numerous ideas that prepare it for what is new in the 
 next epoch. 
 
 Everything that is learned in one epoch serves at once as 
 a powerful aid to the understanding of what follows in the 
 next higher ; that which has become, explains that which is 
 becoming. A happier arrangement of material for the pur- 
 pose of the most thorough and many-sided apperception, 
 can scarcely be imagined. With its aid, it would seem that 
 
 'Herbart, Psychology as a Science, II., 226; Stoy, Encydopadie, p. 67, 
 81. What is true in the oft quoted and oft misunderstood phrase, " Let 
 all instruction advance without break," receives in the above require- 
 ment its due. 
 
 1 Willman, Didaktik als Bildungslehre, Vol. II., 214. Cf. also Karman 
 in Rein's Pad. Stndien, 1888, p. 201.
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. . 131 
 
 subject-matter can be assigned to each school year, for 
 which the most favorable conditions for apperception are, 
 relatively speaking, at hand, and through which certain 
 epochs of apperception can be created within the limits of 
 the capacities of child mind. 1 In the choice of matter 
 according to historical points of view we discover all that is 
 justifiable in Ziller's theory of culture-epochs. 2 
 
 Finally, the apperceptive power of the pupil can be 
 increased by the sequence of topics in the various studies ; 
 so it can be also by the right choice and arrangement of 
 
 1 These, nevertheless, do not always coincide with the actual periods of 
 development in the mind of the child. The latter, rather, comprehend 
 several of the former in themselves; the pupil, too, will not "pass 
 through and experience " the culture-epochs, in the strict sense of the 
 word, but only busy himself with them, in order, as vividly as possible, 
 with the aid of fancy, to picture them to himself as historical facts, to 
 understand them thoroughly, and to unite them with the feelings of 
 hearty sympathy. If such a thorough and sympathetic grasp of the sub- 
 ject-matter of the studies can be called " experiencing " it we have no ob- 
 jections to make. 
 
 2 That which is untenable in it will be hidden from many by the ambi- 
 guity of certain universal concepts. For example, the defence is made 
 that Ziller only asserts a correspondence between individual and race 
 development "on the whole" but there are deduced from this ex- 
 ceedingly indefinite expression very comprehensive, definite, and there- 
 fore far-reaching conclusions. First of all, the parallelism (or more 
 recently, the analogy) between the development of the race and that of 
 the individual is touched upon, in order, without further ceremony, to 
 substitute pupil for individual where pedagogical conclusions are to be 
 drawn. The concept " epoch of development " is used just so long as one 
 moves in the universal, abstract requirements of the theory. But as soon 
 as one descends to the concrete facts of the school practice, that concept 
 receives in a twinkling quite a different meaning, that of the apperception 
 epoch. And now one can indeed willingly grant to the defender of the 
 theory that in general the culture-matter is best apperceived if it is pre- 
 sented in historical sequence. But if that is to be the essence and real 
 meaning of the theory of culture epochs, wherefore the lofty words about 
 the two developments that run fully parallel with one another, which in 
 their chief stages must correspond perfectly? Cf. Jahrbuch d. V.f.w 
 P., XXI., 165 ; Ziller, Ally. Pdday., p. 216.
 
 132 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 that which is carried on side by side ; in other words, by 
 the proper coordination of studies. It becomes clear that a 
 simultaneous treatment of the same topic in different subjects 
 according to several points of view, or the introduction of 
 closely related objects and facts, must essentially assist mental 
 assimilation. Then the ideas and interests gained from 
 the one province of knowledge affect the related provinces as 
 apperceiving powers which fix the new in consciousness as 
 something relatively familiar. They assist understanding, 
 because they constitute in some cases the conditions of apper- 
 ception, and in others a sufficient explanation of enigmatical 
 phenomena, thus helping to complete the apprehension and 
 insuring a more fundamental grasp of the subject. But they 
 do this so much the more reliably, in that they appear, not 
 years after when obstructed by other and totally different 
 ideas and interests, but at once and with undiminished 
 force. Thus arises that harmonious state of thought 
 and feeling which, like the right mood, is especially 
 favorable to the assimilation of knowledge. Accordingly 
 there is to be recommended such a choice and arrangement 
 of studies that at each stage the largest possible amount of 
 related matter may be treated at one time, and thus be 
 brought into a unity in consciousness. 
 
 Let us now sum up briefly the requirements that have 
 revealed themselves in reference to the object of appercep- 
 tion. In general this direction holds good : Offer to the 
 child always that knowledge for whose thorough assimilation 
 the most favorable conditions are present or easy to create. 
 
 How can this be done? 
 
 1. Such materials of knowledge must be chosen as lie 
 close to child experience in general, and likewise to the 
 consciousness of the people, i. e., the subject-matter of 
 national culture.
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 133 
 
 2. They must, as regards content and form, take into 
 consideration certain peculiarities of the child's intellectual 
 development. 
 
 3. They are to be arranged in such a manner that every 
 topic shall create for the following ones numerous strong 
 aids to apperception; i. e., according to historical sequence 
 (Law of Propaedeutics). 
 
 4. The various parallel subjects of the curriculum are 
 to be arranged in such a manner that in each grade as 
 many as possible allied topics may be associated, so that 
 what is related in fact, may be related in the consciousness 
 of the child (Law of Coordination, or Concentration of 
 Studies). 
 
 In so far as the simultaneous realization of the foregoing 
 requirements does not meet insurmountable difficulties they 
 may be regarded as valid. And indeed in most cases they 
 will support and confirm one another. Yet the possibility is 
 by no means excluded that one or the other requirements 
 will clash with the rest. Certain material may be chosen in 
 accordance with the historical principle, which in content 
 and form expects too much from the child at a certain epoch 
 of his development. Or the unequal rate of historical pro- 
 gress in the different branches does not admit of a useful 
 concentration in the instruction. And the case is also con- 
 ceivable that, in the realization of the third and fourth re- 
 quirements, the intrinsic value of the subject-matter for 
 instruction might not receive its full due. In all these 
 cases it is advisable to limit one requirement by another, as 
 far as is necessary, and not to lose sight of the chief prin- 
 ciple while considering special applications. This refers to 
 the last two directions ; while the first two, which have 
 reference to given, unchangeable facts, can not be sub- 
 jected to any limitation. It does not lie within the province
 
 134 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 of this discussion to sketch a complete curriculum of studies 
 in accordance with the foregoing principles, even for one 
 grade of school. Only a few practical conclusions may be 
 permitted to us in connection with these general require- 
 ments. 
 
 If we ask what historical subject-matter for moral culture 
 must at all events have a place in the scheme of instruction, 
 not merely for moral and religious, but also for psychological 
 reasons, we find that custom ascribes the first place to stories 
 from the Sacred Writ. And properly, too. For its figures 
 stand close to the consciousness of the people as very few 
 others do ; its thoughts are bound up with our most sacred 
 feelings and convictions. As long as our people see the 
 source of their belief in the Holy Scriptures ; as long as 
 they, like their fathers, are edified by the examples of its 
 holy men, just so long will biblical views and sentiments, 
 biblical thoughts and precepts even in the language pe- 
 culiar to them constitute the essence of our national 
 thought. However remote they seem to be from our 
 country, the Scriptures are still the basis of the national 
 culture in the best sense of the word. That they must 
 stand in the foreground of public school instruction, is 
 the universal agreement of the German people. Only in 
 this do opinions differ, the order in which they shall be 
 presented, whether in concentric circles or in a straight line; 
 whether sacred history is to be brought forward only once 
 according to the chief points in its epochs, or whether each 
 story is to be offered repeatedly. 
 
 The law of propaedeutics undoubtedly demands progress 
 according to historical points of view, a gradual traversing 
 of the matter in accordance with the historical course of 
 biblical development. This manner of procedure offers 
 the opportunity of always bringing before the child great
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 135 
 
 connected epochs of history. 1 Then the pupil will not be 
 constantly thrown from one sphere of thought to another by 
 means of numerous isolated stories, but the inner connection 
 that exists between the personages and events of the same 
 sacred epoch, the similarity of exterior circumstances ac- 
 companying them, of geographical surroundings, of customs 
 and usages, of the conditions of life and the like, make it 
 possible for the child soon to feel at home in this world, 
 otherwise strange to him. There are indeed the same re- 
 ligious sentiments and intuitions, the same social affairs 
 and customs, the same planes and conditions of culture 
 which are constantly recurring in the various stories. And 
 how often and naturally is opportunity given for compari- 
 sons, for looking backward and forward, for the perfecting 
 and repetition of what is already learned ! The instruction 
 advances constantly and yet gives nothing completely new. 
 In a word, closely related historical matter creates in the 
 numerous related ideas that it awakens the most favorable 
 conditions for their successful apperception. In addition to 
 this, religious instruction that progresses according to epochs 
 of history gives the pupil sufficient time thoroughly to ab- 
 sorb and appropriate the subject-matter. It is not of im- 
 portance to the child to "go through " the subject in two or 
 three years at any cost ; that the knowledge shall surely be- 
 come the intellectual property of the pupil during his school 
 life is the important thing. By going forward so slowly, a 
 thorough mastery of the individual stories is rendered pos- 
 sible. The child gains time, not merely to grasp firmly the 
 
 1 Our school programs, often suffering from the diffusion of instruction, 
 appear to be in especial need of such important, unitary classic matter. 
 Indeed Geibel, to whom we owe so many encouraging words about moral 
 education and instruction, sees in the motley array of these programs, 
 and the hasty treatment of heterogeneous matter, a backward and harmful 
 tendency of our modern culture.
 
 136 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 sacred events per .<w>, but to make for himself a clear picture 
 of their historical background, and to see the conditions of 
 human action. We can seek to follow the motives and in- 
 tentions of the acting personages, to recognize their feelings 
 and thoughts, and thus gain deeper understanding of histori- 
 cal events. By entering thus into strange manners of 
 thought and aspirations, the child now cultivates an inter- 
 course with historical personages from which a strong sym- 
 pathetic fellow-feeling, a lively interest, readily arises. It 
 is our conviction, resting upon years of experience, that such 
 a de.ep, cheerful grasp of sacred history is not possible in 
 the restless haste with which instruction usually advances 
 and is compelled to advance according to " concentric 
 circles." And even this fact, confirmed by many conscien- 
 tious teachers, that the essential content of sacred history 
 can never be assimilated by the tender youth in two or three 
 years, and much less infused into heart and disposition, 
 argues an extension and lengthening of the course in biblical 
 history, and a laying aside or modification of the concentric 
 circles. 
 
 To be sure, in defense of the repeated appearance of the 
 same historical matter, one may argue that the lesson will 
 tend to become more firmly impressed on the mind, and 
 that the right understanding will perhaps reveal the second 
 time what remained obscure to the child at first. But 
 we fear that though in this manner it is perhaps more 
 firmly impressed (and mechanically at that), it is not apper- 
 ceived any better. For it is a psychological fact that a 
 mere superficial grasp of the new usually kills the interest 
 in it. What one has learned once, but not rightly, has 
 too little attraction and too many known elements to be 
 able to hold the^attention long. The right apperception is 
 lacking, or a very superficial apperception is accomplished,
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 137 
 
 not because the subject-matter offers too much that is new, 
 but because it offers too little. Jean Paul remarks in one 
 place, when looking back at the restless traffic of the great 
 city : ' ' We become indifferent to men only when we see 
 them often and not rightly, when we associate with many 
 without becoming rightly acquainted with one." Might not 
 that hold good also with historical characters, who hasten, 
 according to the " concentric circles," in motley array every 
 year or two across the threshhold of the childish con- 
 sciousness? Does not many a pupil become frightfully 
 indifferent to the ideal figures of biblical history and to 
 those of his country because he had intercourse with too 
 many, one after the other, without " being rightly acquainted 
 with any one " ? 
 
 Rather assimilate one subject once, but thoroughly, than 
 busy ourselves with it repeatedly, but without deeper in- 
 terest ! That which is to become a power in the pupil, and 
 to be closely welded to his most cherished thoughts and 
 feelings, must not pass hurriedly and unconnectedly before 
 his soul like the images of a kaleidoscope ; it must occupy 
 him long and uninterruptedly. 
 
 The more thoroughly and successfully the pupil enters into 
 the religious epochs of development, the more does a further 
 reason for the superiority of the instruction that advances 
 in a straight line assert its value ; everything that pre- 
 cedes prepares the mind of the pupil for what follows. In- 
 deed often the religious views of earlier epochs of sacred 
 history furnish the key to an understanding of the later 
 epochs of religious life, such as the great deeds of the divine 
 Teacher. The Old Testament has especial value as a neces- 
 sary epoch, preparatory for Christianity as a discipline es- 
 sential to a reception of Christ. "The pictures of the Old 
 Testament become prototypes to those of the New. In
 
 138 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 Israel's priesthood, in its kingdom and its age of prophets, 
 is concentrated the Old Testament prototype of Christianity. 1 
 Through these types the Old Testament becomes likewise an 
 elementary school for the comprehension of Christ and his 
 works. How could the holy work of reconciliation be pre- 
 sented more clearly or in a more plastic manner than by the 
 whole sacrificial service of the priesthood ; how could the 
 all-embracing position of Christ as Lord be expressed to his 
 disciples and to the world more comprehensibly than by the 
 image of the King in the realm of God ? Therefore the New 
 Testament speaks almost entirely in Old Testament figures, 
 even when it speaks of New Testament matters. The New 
 Testament cannot speak otherwise than in Old Testa- 
 ment language ; for the Old Testament is the lexicon of 
 the New : from it are borrowed the words, figures, ideas, 
 the whole language, but everything in spirit and in truth 
 filled with that life, the shadow and prototype of which is in 
 the Old Testament." If that is the case, then the pupil who 
 by a longer study of the Old Testament stories has been 
 made intimately acquainted with their contents and spirit 
 will evidently enter most deeply into the instructive matter 
 of the New Testament ; at any rate, more easily and surely 
 than the child that has been led in quick course through the 
 most varied epochs of sacred history, and in whose mind the 
 most diverse religious conceptions have been already 
 mingled. 
 
 If, from the reasons just presented, the arrangement of 
 biblical history according to historical principles, appears the 
 right one, it still behooves us before we finally decide, to 
 test some considerations in opposition to our assumption, 
 
 1 See the beautiful and convincing proof of this in Max Frommel's 
 Charakterbildern zur Charakterbilduny , from which we have cited the 
 above passage (p. 38, etc.)-
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 139 
 
 which are deduced from other and not less correct principles. 
 It is said that our arrangement of matter does not take the 
 child's power of comprehension sufficiently into consideration, 
 that it offers certain stories at a period when the proper 
 capability for apperceiving them is not yet present. Now, 
 it may indeed happen that at the time the child may lack 
 either the necessary inner experience or the required maturity 
 and keenness of judgment for the deeper comprehension of 
 certain historical facts and sacred truths. But instruction 
 according to ' ' concentric circles " does not remove this diffi- 
 culty. 
 
 For we have here to do with conditions of apperception 
 which do not make their appearance suddenly, in a day, or 
 even in a year or two, but which are to be looked for only 
 after a much longer time in the next stage of development. 
 Accordingly that for which the child is not yet mature 
 enough will have to be treated, not in ' ' the next course or 
 concentric circle," but much later, perhaps at the end of 
 his school days. 
 
 It is therefore advisable, at all events in the last year of 
 school, to follow the instruction in biblical history, for the 
 purpose of connection, with a repetition of the Gospel, to- 
 gether with supplementary biblical and poetical selections 
 to fill out the previous omissions. But much of what is 
 thought too difficult for certain grades is, however, to be 
 included in those matters, the ability for the apperception 
 of which can be formed in the recitation, if the teacher will 
 avail himself of the advantage presented by an arrangement 
 of the selections according to the law of propaedeutics. 
 The instruction approaches this in so far as it follows the 
 course of the unfolding of the Gospel, proceeding essentially 
 from simple, easily understood conditions and religious 
 truths to more complicated and difficult ones. This is in
 
 140 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 imitation of the Divine Teacher who likewise has raised 
 mankind only gradually from incomplete notions to riper 
 knowledge. By this is not, however, to be understood that 
 we detain the pupil purposely in erroneous, specifically 
 Jewish ways of thinking ; much rather should such religious 
 prejudices, when encountered by the child in the Bible, find 
 their correction through reference to the Christian con- 
 science of our own time. By such a course we are enabled 
 to present to the children the divine truths in such a sequence 
 as corresponds approximately to their successive stages of 
 spiritual maturity. We can announce the great divine 
 secrets, as they reveal themselves in the work of redemption 
 through Christ, to the pupil at a time when a sufficient 
 measure of inner experience has prepared in him the right 
 receptivity for them. 1 Is not that taking sufficient account 
 of the development of the child ? Enough, we are not 
 afraid that our course of instruction will reserve for a time 
 too much of the actual facts of the Gospel. We admit readily 
 that the first stories of the Old Testament are not appro- 
 priate to begin with. We have Bible stories, the facts of 
 which lie much nearer to the religious conscience of the 
 people and the experience of the child; e. g., those stories 
 of the New Testament whose content the child has learned 
 to know and love, or at least for which a lively interest has 
 
 1 Nothing is indeed so apt to close the child's heart against divine 
 things as a too early introduction to their knowledge. But what deep 
 secrets of the Christian faith are only too often discussed with young 
 children who lack entirely the experiences necessary to understand them! 
 What can result but verbalism, which fastens itself like mildew on the 
 youthful spirit? The understanding can of course at length reach the 
 verbal meaning of most of the teachings of the faith. But for real ap- 
 preciation, for actual conviction, there is need of the help of a soul in 
 whose own experiences the word of Scripture finds a clear echo. And for 
 such spiritual comprehension of the sublimest secrets of our faith we 
 should indeed grant our little ones the right time.
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 141 
 
 been roused in him through the chief events of the church 
 year, and more particularly the festivals. For the solemn 
 celebration by the church of those important days, the 
 popular customs at the various festivals, all the small and 
 great joys that they are wont to bring to the simple-minded 
 youth, are so closely bound up in the heart that in and with 
 these joyous memories the child brings with him into the 
 school strong and lively apperception helps for more than 
 one group of Bible stories. Now just as the Christian . father- 
 does not neglect at Christmas time, under the bright rays 
 of the Christmas tree, to open the eyes and hearts of his 
 children to the meaning of the day through the simple 
 narration of the Gospel of Glad Tidings, so the teacher, 
 rightly and with success, will also announce even to the little 
 ones of the first grade the joyful message of the Christ-child. 
 He will, in connection with the child's own daily life and 
 experience, and with the usages and customs of the neighbor- 
 hood, make the journey with him in the course of the school 
 year, up to the main events of the church year, and in this 
 way give the chief days the right religious meaning ; he will 
 associate the sacred stories with the strongest and most joy- 
 ous memories of the little ones. He will further lead the 
 interest of the children from those stories as the starting 
 point to the life and work of the Saviour ; he will relate to 
 them how the dear Lord went about doing good everywhere, 
 healing the sick and blessing the children, and in this way 
 he will teach them to love Him as the best friend of man. 
 Thus at the very opening of the sacred history appears a 
 group of stories which, being connected by the unity of their 
 content and carried through the church life of the present, 
 are best calculated to meet the interest of the little folks. 
 It is not only psychologically possible, but we are morally 
 bound, to begin the religious instruction with the little ones,
 
 142 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 and that, too, in the course of the first school year. What- 
 ever is, in future, to be a power in the child, must from a 
 very early age grow up with his thinking and feeling. 
 
 Accordingly, when we at first anticipate the connected 
 history of the Gospel with stories from the New Testament, 
 and then in the next grade follow the church festivals and 
 treat such stories further, although also partly for edification ; 
 when we still further decide from pedagogical motives on 
 another closing recapitulation of sacred history in connection 
 with Bible reading, all this shows that the historical principle 
 cannot prevail without modification, but must suffer a re- 
 striction from another equally important principle. To be 
 sure, the objection that once going over the chief points 
 in the history is no warrant for the permanent retention of 
 the matter, is not able to shake that principle. For it is 
 quite in accord with the latter to pass over and live through 
 the Bible stories again and again to be sure not in the 
 form of mechanical, arbitrary repetition, which is sure to be 
 followed by weariness, but rather in the way of thoughtful 
 and thorough comprehension of the meaning. In so far as 
 on principle we ask ourselves, when we take up any new 
 topic, what known ideas from earlier stories can be used 
 for the purpose of comparing and filling out, confirming 
 and illustrating the important facts and truths contained in 
 the story ; in so far as in this way we put the newly learned 
 everywhere in relation to the earlier acquired religious 
 thoughts of the child, we impress upon him the facts of the 
 Gospel history, if not in a better way than that of instruction 
 in concentric circles, at least in a manner leading to results 
 quite as lasting. Such explanatory repetitious have, besides, 
 the advantage of not appearing to the child as such, and 
 therefore keep off the oppressive feeling of mental stagna- 
 tion. They furnish opportunity, further, of setting such parts
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 143 
 
 of the history as could not at first be fully grasped by the 
 children in the light of other facts at a later time, and thus 
 securing for them a complete understanding. In this way 
 the culture quality of the harder pails of the Gospel certainly 
 secures due treatment, and it is not to be feared that, as 
 Dorpf eld 1 says, ' ' the ideas of the great personalities of 
 the Old Testament especially will remain entirely too 
 childish." 
 
 Finally, we have still to consider how the religious in- 
 struction (of the public schools) can best satisfy the 
 demands of the fourth of the above named principles, the law 
 of Concentration, in relation to choice and arrangement of 
 the subject-matter. It of course goes without saying that in 
 its own field this instruction must not separate and tear apart 
 what naturally belongs together. It must not let Bible read- 
 ing, Bible quotation, Bible story, catechism, and religious 
 hymn go their own separate ways. That would amount to 
 deliberately dissipating the child's thoughts and purposely 
 making the learning more difficult. Religious instruction is, 
 on the contrary, a connected whole, and its basis in all the 
 grades is biblical history. 2 From the facts of the Gospel, 
 the child gains under the direction of the teacher these moral 
 
 Rector F. W. Dorpfeld of Ronsdorf near Elberfeld-Barmen in Rhenish 
 Prussia. 
 
 2 Rompler expresses himself in the same sense in his Manual for 
 Teachers in the proper Treatment of Biblical History. He regards it as 
 quite proper even in middle and upper grades to base all the religious in- 
 struction on that in biblical history (p. 12). For the instruction in bib- 
 lical history furnishes in connection with certain didactic portions all 
 that the children of the public schools need in the way of religious and 
 moral culture (p. 23). Especially noticeable is the proposition to sub- 
 stitute the name " Religion" in the Roster for all classes, since it would 
 consequently be left to the discretion of the religious instructor, whether 
 in his recitation to-day or to-morrow he makes use of a story or a proposi- 
 tion or the contents of a whole book in the Bible, etc., provided only he 
 cover the prescribed ground (p. 12).
 
 144 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 ami religious truths as they are laid down in church creed 
 and Bible proverb ; and the exalted, pious frame of mind 
 gained by earnest absorption in biblical history finds its 
 permanent expression in the religious hymn. Proverb, 
 catechism, prayer and hymn are the blossom and fruit of 
 one tree the story of the Gospel. And, as little as blossom 
 and fruit can be thought of without the stem or trunk that 
 bears them, so little can those forms of religious instruction, 
 in the public schools at least, be separated from the his- 
 torical ground on which they grew up. To put these into 
 the closest connection with one another and with biblical 
 history means to prepare for them the best helps to apper- 
 ception. On this account the course in biblical history 
 should control the choice of the other religious matter con- 
 nected with it. In particular, no teacher, if he prefers the 
 historical to the systematical method of instruction in the 
 catechism, ought to be prevented from following his convic- 
 tion, provided only that the scholars are brought to an 
 understanding and into sure possession of the prescribed 
 amount. 1 
 
 In the above we have given the instruction in biblical his- 
 tory a relatively detailed exposition, in order to show as 
 plainly as possible by one example how we mean to realize 
 the four fundamental principles relating to choice of matter 
 and its arrangement, and how each is modified through the 
 others. Now, then, we can be brief in speaking of the other 
 subjects of the course. 
 
 Of the secular subjects, the German popular fairy tales 
 have rightly found an abiding place in school instruction. 
 They have great national educational value, since they reflect 
 
 > Whether the religious instruction is to be brought into relation with 
 the other subjects of instruction and in how far this should take place 
 cannot be discussed here.
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 145 
 
 the thoughts and feelings, the naive view of creation charac- 
 teristic of the youthful period of our people, and since they 
 disclose the noblest traits in the souls of the people fidelity 
 and moral purity. Above all they are in sympathy with the 
 child's way of looking at things, his yearnings and feel- 
 ings. The persons in the fairy tales belong to the simple 
 conditions of the village or small town, and where kings and 
 princes enter into the story, the court life is represented in a 
 very childlike manner. In general these people think and 
 feel* altogether like children. This shows itself no less in 
 their simple humor than in the judgment of others' motives 
 and intentions. Just as the child knows only good and bad 
 people in his intercourse, according to the sympathy or antip- 
 athy which they inspire in him, so also in the fairy tales the 
 persons are either good or bad. In them the impatient feel- 
 ing of justice so characteristic of young people is always 
 satisfied. We see even here on earth in these tales the good 
 rewarded and the bad punished. The fairy tale lingers with 
 especial fondness in the animal kingdom, in this respect cor- 
 responding exactly to the childish inclination that loves best 
 to regard animals as playfellows. And just as the little 
 folks lend them human thoughts and motives, so also the 
 fairy tale makes the grim bear, the voracious wolf, and the 
 cunning fox appear in the story as equally privileged com- 
 panions of man. Neither the child nor the fairy tale have 
 any definite consciousness of time ; therefore it says so 
 often: "A long time ago there lived ," "Once upon 
 a time ." And space, too, presents no bounds to their 
 imagination, for there is no definite place, no definite scene of 
 action named ; but house and yard, garden and field and 
 woods, where the child is at home, are the external world of 
 the fairy tale. What lies beyond the dark woods belongs, 
 alike for child and fairy tale, to the realm of the mysterious
 
 146 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 and wonderful. And it is precisely the wonderful and the 
 magical that both love. The critical understanding does not 
 yet make itself dominant and seek after the causes of things 
 and events, distinguishing between the possible and the im- 
 possible, but the imagination has full sway. The imaginative 
 view of the world is common to both. Accordingly the fairy 
 tale must be considered congenial matter for early youth and 
 must be assured of a preferred place at the beginning of 
 school instruction. 1 
 
 The fairy tale is followed by the heroic saga. This ac- 
 quaints us with that stirring period, when German power and 
 spirit for the first time step forward in the dawn of history 
 and maintain themselves victorious and glorious in the struggle 
 with the mighty powers of nature and with foreign peoples. 
 Their gigantic figures still live on in the mouth and heart of 
 our people, expressing their own strong points and weak- 
 nesses with especial vividness. Since the saga treads earthly 
 ways more than the fairy tale and turns with preference to 
 human figures and deeds, as it connects its tales with definite 
 persons and places, and not seldom mingles with these some 
 real historical facts, so it forms the natural transition from 
 the fairy tale to history ; it carries over the imaginative view 
 of the world characteristic of the child into the rational. 
 
 1 It is here presupposed that a pedagogical ly wise choice has been 
 made from the multitude of available tales. It is not seldom that one 
 hears the opinion expressed that those meritorious collectors and re- 
 hearsers of the German popular fairy tales, the Brothers Grimm, were 
 quite far from ever intending to present in their book for young people a 
 new material for culture and instruction. This is contradicted most 
 directly by an expression of Jacob Grimm's. On New Year's day, 1813, he 
 sent his friend Wigand his little book with the words: "Your children 
 will learn a great deal out of the book, I hope. It it our definite purpose 
 that the book shall be regarded as an educational one. Only you must 
 wait till they can understand, and then you must not give too much at 
 once, but little by little, always a erumb of this sweet food." Deutsche 
 Rundschau, 1885, pp. 55, ff.
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 147 
 
 And still another, an ethical quality, makes it appear a spe- 
 cially appropriate matter of instruction for the growing boy. 
 Experience teaches that not all moral ideas unfold at the 
 same time and in equal measure in the human mind ; that 
 rather at certain periods one or another exercises a kind of 
 predominance over the rest. We have already seen how, 
 for example, in every one the idea of inner freedom (?'. e., the 
 ideal of a will that guides itself not according to subjective 
 reasons, sensual feelings of pleasure or pain, but without ex- 
 ception, strictly according to the best objective insight) 
 reaches realization only relatively late. Even the hearty 
 affection and devotion to a person, such as we often notice 
 touchingly exemplified in children, is still in the most cases 
 very far from pure, disinterested benevolence. One idea, 
 however, rules without exception in the boyhood of every 
 one, and that is the idea of perfection, or, better, there is 
 one yearning in the mind of the boy that of the exercise 
 of power, the joy in the strong will, and the adventurous 
 deed. Visit the play-grounds of our boys. Nothing but ex- 
 ceptional strength, bodily vigor, and an energetic will are 
 of any account here. Whoever in the military games and 
 wrestling matches is always victorious, by reason of bodily 
 strength and intellectual superiority, is obeyed by the whole 
 crowd ; the weakling, however, or lax character, let him show 
 ever so much good-naturedness and agreeableness, does not 
 gain recognition. Pestalozzi, provided with all the best 
 qualities of the heart, but dreamy and awkward, was teased 
 by his playfellows as " Harry Wonderful of Foolsdora"; 
 while the determined and skillful grandson of Astyages on 
 the other hand was chosen by the Medean boys as their king. 
 With what joy do the young listen to the tales of the glorious 
 old heroes of the early days ! They are certainly not in- 
 different to the gentleness of temper and purity of mind that
 
 148 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 is so praised in them ; but what excites them the most, what 
 pleases them beyond all, is still the tremendous power and 
 the defiant courage. Moreover, the child does not have at 
 this time an equal receptivity for all ideas ; he must first live 
 through his period of force and have his hero, with whom he 
 fights and suffers, on whose will his own grows strong and 
 matures. Let us then not begrudge him such an ideal, but 
 let us give the saga the place that it deserves. The epic 
 should form the beginning of the instruction in history. For 
 this is just what rouses a multitude of apperceptive aids in 
 the boy when it sings of the deeds and victories of human 
 power ; when it tells how a strong will overcomes even giants 
 and goes forth undaunted out of years of disgraceful impris- 
 onment. The boy needs a hero that he understands, for 
 whom he has a warm interest, and whom he can emulate 
 then give him at the right time his Siegfried and his Dietrich, 
 that their example may light him onward. 1 
 
 But what is true of the German saga may surely, one 
 would think, be maintained also in regard to the Hellenic 
 sagas, the history of Achilles and Ulysses. Indeed they 
 reflect the same period of civilization and correspond to the 
 mental constitution of youth as few epics do, so that they 
 have not seldom been preferred in school to our own heroic 
 sagas. But the latter are certainly nearer to the individu- 
 ality of a German boy than those of the Greeks are. For 
 they are the heroes of his people, speaking his language, 
 living in his country are the bold heroes into whose world 
 of thought and deed he has already been introduced by the 
 stories of the neighborhood, the castle-ruins gray with age, 
 the knights' armor and weapons, popular belief and legend. 
 All these of themselves attract the individuality of a German 
 
 1 Zillig in Jahrbuch del VcrtintfZr wissentchaftliche Padagogik, XVI., 
 p. 39.
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 149 
 
 boy. 1 But how different is it in the case of the Homeric 
 sagas ! Strange names and figures, strange customs and 
 habits, an entirely different landscape with its peculiar 
 flora, all these prevent a full appreciation of the elements of 
 those sagas which otherwise are so beautifully adapted to 
 mental constitution of the young, because they render the 
 apperception of the new, difficult to the boy who has to be 
 made to feel at home in the prehistoric period of Greece. It 
 follows from this, that the German boy is to be introduced 
 first of all to the national epics, and that through these the 
 foreign sagas are then to be appropriated. When the ele- 
 mentary instruction in history of the public schools has made 
 them familiar with the Nibelungen Tales, our boys in the 
 higher classes, stimulated perhaps by the instruction in 
 German, may choose for themselves the sagas of Ulysses 
 and Achilles as reading. 2 
 
 Finally, so far as concerns the material of profane history 
 in the public school, it can scarcely admit of doubt after 
 the preceding exposition that it must be gathered not from 
 universal history, but first of all from the history of the 
 German people. Foreign civilized nations are to receive 
 attention only in so far as they have exercised an essential 
 influence that the child can be made to understand on the 
 development of our civilized life or of the history of the 
 Gospel. But those historical facts are always to be made 
 
 1 Compare the author's treatise on " The German Saga in Historical In- 
 struction in the People's Schools." Kehr's Padagoyische Blatter, 1876, 
 pp. 202, ff. 
 
 'Against the treatment of Robinson Crusoe in the first course (per- 
 haps in second grade) we may mention the fact that it is not a material for 
 national culture, that it is too far removed from the outward and inward 
 experience of the child in this grade, and therefore presumes decidedly 
 too much on his activity of imagination and his moral conscience. We 
 agree, therefore, entirely with the doubts expressed by Hartmann in this 
 regard. Siichsischc Schulzeitung, 1887, p. 175.
 
 150 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 prominent that testify to the gradual progress in intellectual 
 and material life, those facts that stand in causal connection 
 with the civil, religious, social and economical institutions 
 and conditions of our time. In this way the history of the 
 several states becomes the history of civilization; the past 
 empties into the present with as full a stream as possible ; 
 the material of culture ever remains near to the national 
 sphere of thought and so also near to the experience and in- 
 terest of the child. 
 
 The arrangement of the subject-matter of the course will 
 here in the main follow the historical principle likewise, 
 although in details the other pedagogical principles may make 
 modifications necessary. In this connection we can refer the 
 reader to our remarks on instruction iu biblical history. 
 
 In other fields of instruction, as in history it appears that 
 the pupil's power of apperception is not dependent solely on 
 the unchanging factors connected with his mental develop- 
 ment, but that it can be essentially increased through appro- 
 priate choice and distribution of the subject-matter of 
 instruction. How much easier and better would be the 
 apperception, with how much greater success would be the 
 learniug, if the geographical matter were put in closer con- 
 nection with the history ; if natural philosophy illustrated 
 the progress in human work, if drawing followed the develop- 
 ment of the fine arts, if arithmetic drew its matter principally 
 from subjects dealing with material things, to demonstrate 
 all this would be as interesting as it would be important. 
 In these matters we have made only isolated beginnings, 
 although they are full of promise. Much individual work 
 is still to be done, and much credit is still to be gained. 
 But we do not deceive ourselves, when we seek progress in 
 methods preferably in that direction designated by the laws 
 of propaedeutics and of concentration. To select the material
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 151 
 
 for instruction, and then to bring these laws as far as pos- 
 sible into consonance with one another and with other 
 principles, should be, in every subject, the most important 
 problem of the student of methodology. 
 
 After the teacher has satisfied the demands to be made 
 regarding the object of apperception, he has further to take 
 care that all the helps to apperception that already exist in 
 the mind of the scholar or that may easily be made effective, 
 shall be turned to account. He must therefore turn his 
 attention to the subject that apperceives ; viz., the child. 
 
 2. PEDAGOGICAL DEMANDS WITH REFERENCE TO THE 
 APPEKCEIVING SUBJECT. 
 
 (Investigation, enlargement and utilization of the child's store 
 of experience. ) 
 
 In general, with reference to the apperceiving subject, the 
 teacher must see to it that the pupil holds in readiness 
 numerous similar, strong and well arranged ideas for the 
 new material that the instruction is to bring to the understand- 
 ing. 
 
 This presupposes, however, not only familiarity with 
 child-nature in general, and its stages of development, but 
 also in particular a thorough knowledge of 'the peculiar store 
 of ideas possessed by the pupils of a particular school, and 
 a deep insight into head and heart of one's own scholars. 
 Both do not fall to the lot of the born educator ; they must 
 be laboriously acquired through long years of conscientious 
 observation. For this purpose it is not enough to know the 
 pupil merely in the few school hours in which only a portion 
 of his ego manifests itself, and that not always the most im- 
 portant part, nor is it enough to undertake to judge him by 
 his reports. It is necessary to hunt for his individual traits
 
 152 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 on the play-ground, on walks and at celebrations, where he 
 appears much more free and unconstrained among his play- 
 fellows. It is necessary to cultivate active intercourse with 
 the parents, and in general with the circle of people to whom 
 the scholar belongs ; not less necessary is it through pure, 
 unselfish benevolence to keep the heart of the child open to 
 us, if a deeper view into his soul is to be our portion. Ex- 
 tremely difficult it will of course always remain to see into 
 and understand the child at the commencement of instruc- 
 tion, when as a stranger he comes to school for the first 
 time. What does the teacher know of the great work of 
 mental creation that has been going on in each and every 
 child, and of all that he has lived through and experienced in 
 six long years? It can not cause us wonder then, that there 
 are still in the pedagogical world opposing views in vogue in 
 regard to the number of apperceiving ideas, feelings and 
 desires that the child gains before instruction begins. Some 
 believe that in the case of the elementary pupil we must not 
 presuppose anything, nor reckon on any, or at least many 
 helps to apprehension derived from his experience. They 
 think that instruction, at least at the very first, must 
 commence quite at the beginning and create something 
 entirely new ; it must ever remain in irreconcilable contradic- 
 tion to the life and doings of the child outside of the school. 
 Opposed to this pessimistic view stands on the other extreme 
 one that is quite too optimistic. Such views are held by all 
 those who point to the acquired and innate abilities of the 
 children and believe we cannot presuppose too much in 
 them and who therefore, without asking about the store of 
 apperceiving ideas existing in the child, with enviable care- 
 lessness and security strike out boldly to teach. If the 
 teacher is ever called upon to choose his position in a con- 
 flict of opinions, and through original investigation to form
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 153 
 
 his own conviction, such is the case here. It appears to us 
 that the investigation (difficult as it may be) of the mental 
 products gained by the pupil before the school age, is espe- 
 cially necessary and requisite for all instruction that does 
 not wish to build on a sandy foundation. Important reasons 
 support this view. 
 
 Jean Paul says of the child, that it learns more in the 
 first three years of its life than an adult in his three years 
 at the university ; that a circumnavigator of the globe is 
 indebted for more notions to his nurse than to all the peoples 
 of the world with whom he has come in contact. It is, in 
 fact, astounding what a relatively immense crowd of ideas 
 a human being gains in the first years. He gets acquainted 
 with the thousand things of home, street, garden, field, 
 wood, the wonders of the heavens, the manifold events of 
 nature, the land and people of the neighborhood, and 
 learns to call most of them by name ; he learns to use a great 
 part of the vocabulary of his mother tongue, and its most 
 important forms of word and sentence ; he learns to think in 
 the vernacular. 
 
 These numerous ideas belong at the same time to the most 
 important that a human being ever acquires. They are the first 
 and chief harvest of intellectual activity ; the main trunk of 
 the material of thought with which the whole after-life of the 
 soul is connected. As they are the result of the intercourse 
 of the human being with surrounding nature and the people 
 of the neighborhood, so they serve in turn to facilitate and 
 advance this intercourse ; they are certain of an uncommonly 
 frequent reproduction by reason of their simplicity and 
 distinctness. They form, as it were, the capital in iron, the 
 most indispensable minimum of stock in thought, without 
 which a human being could not get along in the most limited 
 surroundings, in the most restricted circle of experience, let
 
 154 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 alone take part in the material and intellectual interests of 
 his people. They are further the presupposition of all 
 higher intellectual life, the bottom and foundation on which 
 all true culture rests. And just because they have proceeded 
 from sense perceptions, and mostly represent something 
 tangible, mirroring tilings of the outer world, are they es- 
 pecially adapted to be " representative pictures of the distant 
 and the past." They bring into vivid consciousness and 
 distinctness of perception that which lies beyond our horizon 
 in space and time. Just so the pupil, if he succeeds in 
 becoming absorbed in the past and in distinctly picturing to 
 himself historical persons and conditions, or in travelling in 
 fancy in foreign lands, still after all is really wandering on 
 his native soil and working with ideas and perceptions that 
 he has gained about home. This has already been shown 
 above. We have here merely to add that not only in 
 geography and history, but in general in all instruction 
 which requires illustration of what is distant and past by 
 means of description and picturing, recourse must ever be 
 had to ideas acquired by the boy outside of school. Out of 
 these arise further, little by little, numerous psychical con- 
 cepts ; or at least such as have their root in these and re- 
 ceive from them their living content. For instance, it is a 
 long time before the pupil can think of spring without at the 
 same time involuntarily thinking of the green fields, the 
 variegated meadows and blooming trees of his native place. 
 If he has mentally to measure off an hour's journey Or a mile, 
 he will surely recur to two familiar points in the neighbor- 
 hood of home, perhaps two villages or two hills. In this 
 way the child keeps the acquired concepts alive ; for as the 
 tree must wither whose cells are not refilled with fresh sap 
 every spring, so would also our abstract concepts die away 
 and turn to empty shells, if we did not ever anew fill them
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 155 
 
 with material derived from living sense perceptions. In 
 this way the perceptions acquired by the child in his youth 
 help to master and secure the abstract ideas. This is shown 
 by still another consideration. As is well known, all abstract 
 ideas are denoted by words that originally applied only to 
 concrete things, to activities and relations of the outer world. 
 Of course this transference did not take place entirely 
 arbitrarily, but words were mostly chosen that referred to a 
 similarity or to certain relations between the concrete and 
 the abstract idea. One that has the concrete idea in ques- 
 tion vividly present, will necessarily unlock the abstract 
 ideas more easily and fully. Accordingly, we may further 
 assume that also in the case of the child, who brings with 
 him so many concrete mental pictures to school, "the ab- 
 stract ideas must gain much iu meaning through the knowl- 
 edge of the relation of the words in which they are expressed 
 to the picture-words from which they are derived." 1 So, 
 for instance, the idea of the process of plant growth observed 
 innumerable times in nature in the most varied stages, could 
 not exist in the soul without at the same time throwing a 
 bright light on the conception of spiritual and moral growth. 
 Or, what lively echo may those lines from the Edda arouse 
 in the boy, who has become familiar with wood and field, 
 with path and bridge, on his numerous forays into the sur- 
 rounding country : 
 
 " If you've won a friend that you can trust, 
 
 Then visit him not seldom, 
 For bushes green and grass grows high 
 On the road that no one treads." 
 
 Experience confirms this view. We see how a striking 
 figure, a fitting comparison, often transmits understanding 
 of a point to the mind like lightning, and lends to concepts 
 
 1 Lazarus, Das Leben der Seele (third edition), II., pp. 195-196.
 
 156 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 a distinctness that could not be reached without the help of 
 concrete ideas. But if, as Lazarus says, clearness in think- 
 ing, all the way up into the highest regions of concepts, is 
 dependent on the distinctness of the underlying sense- 
 perceptions, then it becomes clear from this fact also, how 
 incomparably important the concrete ideas acquired in early 
 youth are for the intellectual life of man. They are to be 
 set down at once as his strongest and his most lasting ideas. 
 The child received them in a relatively restricted sphere of 
 experience; again and again the same things presented 
 themselves to his perception, and ever deeper did the same 
 ideas imprint themselves upon his mind. With every repeti- 
 tion they increased in vividness and strength, and so he 
 became little by little entirely familiar with the objects of 
 his home and his neighborhood as with dear old friends. 
 For, "that which gains a predominating influence on the 
 way of thinking in the child, is not likely to be solitary, 
 infrequent phenomena and actions, but the general character 
 and continuity of similar observations which he has the 
 opportunity of making on persons and things.' ' 1 The adult 
 has the greatest inclination and love for those fields of ex- 
 perience and spheres of activity in which he works with the 
 greatest ease and success, in which he feels himself fully at 
 home. Just so for the child ; ideas of objects around home 
 have a special charm, because they are associated with 
 numerous feelings of pleasure and of successful activity. 
 Whatever is known and familiar "accommodates itself 
 easily to the flow of ideas and their connections," and gives 
 the mental activity that certainty and regularity on which 
 calmness and joyousness of spirit essentially depend. There- 
 fore also, because the child is " at home " among them, 
 
 1 Waltz, Allyemeinc Padagoyik, third edition, edited by Willmann, 
 page 201.
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 157 
 
 does he feel so well in the midst of the things about home. 
 He recognizes in them his whole world of feeling; for it 
 was already indicated above that the first six years of life 
 furnish the foundation for the feelings also. The intimate 
 intercourse of the child with father, mother, brothers and 
 sisters easily gives rise to the feeling of love and to benevo- 
 lence in its preliminary form directed toward, particular 
 persons only. The social intercourse with playmates and 
 others of the same age gives rise to sympathy in sorrow and 
 in joy, the feeling of justice and of fairness. The helpless- 
 ness and need that make the child run continually to his 
 parents, produce the feeling of dependence, of respect and 
 reverence for authority. How the power of family life, the 
 settled order and quiet habit of home is calculated to implant 
 little by little the moral ideas and religious feelings in the 
 heart of the child, has been shown in an especially warm and 
 convincing manner by Pestalozzi in his book, "How Ger- 
 trude teaches her children." According to him the home is 
 the soil in which alone virtue and religious feeling can thrive 
 and develop. The relation of mother and child is the main 
 source of moral and religious ideas. In this connection, 
 however, the influence of surrounding nature cannot be left 
 unnoticed, as is testified by the confessions of no less gifted 
 persons. Let the reader recall that beautiful expression of 
 our countryman, B. Golz, on the awakening of child-religion 
 through the feelings connected with spring : ' ' When the 
 mild days of winter had gradually melted the snow, when 
 the sparrow and the goldfinch chirruped on all the hedges 
 and roofs in the joyousness of spring, then a mild breeze 
 blew around me, and the sun looked out of the purest 
 ethereal blue, as full of promise into every window and into 
 every human eye, as if it wanted to say to the soul : " Now 
 you have conquered, and I am your old sun again, and you
 
 158 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 are my dear soul as ever' ; then such a mild winter's day 
 became to me a reminder of the old and the new covenant, 
 and a child-religion budded into my childish heart with the 
 anticipated feelings of spring, and opened all the leaves of 
 the written Bible before my mind's eye, so that I afterwards 
 had to recognize in the Christian doctrine and in my con- 
 lirmation nothing but known teachings and sensations." * 
 
 These feelings then grew up before any instruction, and 
 so they remain also the inseparable companion of the range 
 of thoughts connected with home. Their contents are in- 
 dissolubly connected. The things that -surrounded a child 
 or with which he was engaged, in the moment when joy or 
 sorrow stirred his heart, became afterwards the witnesses to 
 his deepest emotions. This explains in no small measure 
 the peculiar charm of home, pictures and ideas, the strength 
 and persistency with which they make themselves felt, often 
 unconsciously, through the whole of life ; and also the fresh- 
 ness and vivacity which adapt them in preference to all other 
 ideas to the apprehension of the new and the strange. For 
 it has been already explicitly shown above that the numer- 
 ous, concrete, fresh and strong ideas gained in earliest youth 
 are the best helps to apperception for all subsequent learning. 
 
 While above, however, we noted the richness and im- 
 portance of the sphere of ideas and feelings which our little 
 ones bring with them to school, we were still thoroughly con- 
 scious of their limits. It could not, therefore, be our object 
 to substantiate the opinion of those who believe they can 
 presuppose everything possible. Quite in a general way it 
 was our wish to give a description of the mental stock that 
 the child brings with him to school, a picture that needs 
 modification and completion as often as juvenile individu- 
 alities occur. For all pupils do not bring with them an 
 
 > liuch der Kindheil, page 103.
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 159 
 
 equal amount of mental treasure, nor do all bring the same. 
 On the contrary, there often appears in the extent and con- 
 tent of children's ideas somewhat glaring differences. The 
 pupil who has passed the morning of his youth in the circle 
 of a happy, honorable, and pious family, who has had the 
 sacred love of a true mother and the moral earnestness of a 
 strict father to watch over him, will come to school with 
 quite other moral and religious feelings and views than the 
 poor child of the proletariat, who perhaps does not even 
 know his father, or who has been daily witness to the most 
 disgusting and ugly family scenes, who has spent the most 
 part of his childhood on the street and has never known the 
 blessing of quiet, happy domestic life. ' ' Children who 
 grow up among crippled factory hands, among consumptive 
 weavers and in woodless places, children who from birth 
 have never seen sea or mountain, are all their lives lacking 
 in the tones, accords and stories that make up the poetry of 
 the world." 1 For, besides the family life, there is also the 
 character of the surrounding nature that conditions many a 
 peculiarity of the child's thought and feeling. It is not a 
 matter of indifference whether we passed our youth in a 
 quiet, retired forest- village, or in a dark, damp dwelling in 
 the turmoil of the metropolis. It is not the same whether 
 we played before the door of a lonely hut on the heath, or 
 whether mighty mountain giants looked in at us through the 
 window early and late. The son of the mountains, who has 
 never gotten out of the exclusiveness of his landscape, will 
 find difficulty in forming an idea of a broad plain. He will 
 ever be thinking of 'his valley widened out somewhat, even 
 when he himself later uses the word. On the other hand, 
 the boys from the Liiueburg Heath will remain p. long time 
 with a very cloudy idea of the Alps, just as our children 
 
 1 Golz, liuch der Kindheit, p. 378.
 
 160 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 from the Vogtland bring to school no notion of the ocean, or 
 a very imperfect one. Different in many respects are the 
 thoughts and feelings of the child from the metropolis and 
 the child from the village or country town. Very different 
 are the notions that they bring with them to the recitation. 
 It cannot be denied that the metropolis offers many ideas to 
 the pupil, that never fall to the lot of the peasant or small 
 townsman in his whole life. They offer a many-sided 
 stimulus. But the material of ideas and concepts is too 
 immense l for the child to master it ; it is too manifold and 
 different in kind, so that the mental pictures too often inter- 
 fere with one another. The objects of perception follow one 
 another in such rapid change that the youthful mind has not 
 enough time in many cases to comprehend them clearly and 
 distinctly. The greatest disadvantage is, finally, that the 
 child in the metropolis gains too few perceptions of the 
 woods and fields, of the mountains, valleys and waters, and 
 of the most important and simplest employments of man, 
 t. e., such out-door notions as we became acquainted with 
 above, as forming the foundation of our intellectual life. So 
 it was found, for instance, in thirty-three people's schools in 
 the Vogtland, in the examination of the newly entered six- 
 years-old children in June of the year 1878, 2 that of 500 city 
 
 1 See Bartholemai (Jalirbuch det Vereint fur wissemchaftliche Pada- 
 goyik, V., pp. 290 ff.). Compare also Sachniche Schulzeituny, 1880, No. 
 35: "On the influence of the metropolis on the sphere of ideas of the 
 child." 
 
 'The examination took place at the instance of the author, between 
 Easter and Whitsuntide, 1878, in the Burgher Schools in Plaucn, and 
 in twenty-one village schools of the Vogtland. The number of children 
 questioned was over 800. Similar statistics were taken in 1880-1884, by 
 Director Dr. Ilartmann in Annaberg. From the interesting statements 
 published we take the fact that the girls showed themselves on the aver- 
 age richer in ideas than the boys, but that all the Annaberg children were 
 in command of relatively few useful ideas on their entrance into school.
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 161 
 
 children questioned, 82 per cent had no idea of " Sunrise" 
 and 77 per cent none of " Sunset" ; 37 per cent had never 
 seen a grainfield, 49 per cent had never seen a pond, 
 80 per cent a lark, and 82 per cent an oak ; 37 per cent had 
 never been in the woods, 29 per cent never on a river bank, 
 52 per cent never on a mountain, 50 per cent never in 
 church, 57 per cent never in a village, and 81 per cent had 
 not yet been in the castle of Plauen ; 72 per cent could not 
 tell- how bread is made out of grain, and 49 per cent knew 
 nothing yet of God. Similar conditions were shown in a 
 factory village in the neighborhood of Reichenbach. In that 
 place of 1 7 children only two knew any river, and what these 
 called a river was a shallow ditch ; only two knew anything 
 of God, and one of these thought of the clouds instead. 
 Relatively much more favorable results were obtained in the 
 examination in the other village schools.. Of the 300 ele- 
 mentary scholars in these only 8 per cent had never seen a 
 grainfield, 14 per cent had never seen a pond, 30 per cent a 
 lark, and 43 per cent an oak; only 14 per cent had never 
 been in the woods, 18 percent on the bank of a creek or 
 river, 26 per cent on a mountain, 51 per cent in a church 
 (many children do not have a church in the place where they 
 live) ; only 37 per cent could not tell how bread comes from 
 grain, and 34 per cent knew nothing of God. We see from 
 this that the child's store of knowledge, though relatively 
 rich in external percepts, is subject to a certain one-sidedness 
 that makes itself sensible as a want because the child's 
 
 It is noticeable that the boys showed themselves superior to the girls in 
 nearly all objects taken from the animal and mineral kingdoms as well as 
 ideas relating to human life. On the other hand, the girls were more at 
 home in fields requiring observation which were designated by the head- 
 ings "Natural Events," " Division of Time," "Landscape," "Religious 
 Ideas." Hartmann, Die Analyse des Kindlichen Gedankenkreises, etc., 
 1885, page 88-94.
 
 162 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 knowledge frequently covers only a few fields. Indeed we 
 are not afraid of falling into contradiction with our previous 
 exposition, if we further maintain that even those important, 
 strong and lasting notions that the child collects in his youth, 
 still need in great part supplementing and clearing up. We 
 called them strong and lasting ideas on account of the lively 
 feelings associated with them and the numerous repetitions 
 that they experienced. That does not in any way mean that 
 the child every time comprehends the things he meets in all 
 their essential characteristics. "We have already seen how in 
 early youth on account of the abundance of impressions 
 pouring in on his senses, the child cannot help apperceiving 
 in a one-sided way. It is not surprising, therefore, that he 
 not unfrequently gets no more than quite superficial or 
 even entirely incorrect notions, and that with reference to 
 objects that he hag daily opportunity of observing. 
 
 Two things follow from the above consideration : It is cer- 
 tain that the child brings to school with him in the numerous, 
 important and strong ideas, feelings and inclinations acquired 
 in youth, at the same time the best and most vivid helps to ap- 
 perception in the recitation. But the content and extent of 
 these are nowhere entirely the same, and in many pupils often 
 differ strikingly from one another. 
 
 For these reasons we demanded above that the teacher 
 should not begin the instruction of his six-year-old little ones 
 at once, as if they were in command of all the helps to ap- 
 perception in equal measure, and that he should not pre- 
 suppose everything in them. 1 We demanded that he explore 
 
 1 " That painful habit of assuming unknown things to be found in 
 children, bars all regular instruction, all orderly education, and implants 
 a habit of thoughtless acceptance and thoughtless repetition of words of 
 the meaning of which one does not think. This habit is a cancer disease 
 in our schools." Jer. Gotthelf, Leiden und Freuden einet Schulmeistert, 
 I., pages 158-159.
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 163 
 
 the existing store of thoughts in the children in order that he 
 may learn to know the ground on which he is further to build, 
 and the most important omissions in sense-perceptions that 
 require filling out. 
 
 For this purpose statistical information is necessary, simi- 
 lar to that mentioned above, or like those investigations first 
 started, we believe, by the pedagogical association in Berlin 
 in the year 1869. 1 
 
 Of course, many difficulties stand in the way of taking 
 such statistics of our six-year-old little ones at their entrance 
 into school. If, for instance, the examination questions 
 be directed to the class, then there is danger that many 
 scholars will acknowledge views that they in reality do not 
 entertain ; many answer in the affirmative only because the 
 others do, below whom they desire not to stand. If, there- 
 fore, the answers of the children are to serve as a foundation 
 for statistical inferences of any kind at all, it is indispensable 
 to examine the pupils in small groups (of two to five chil- 
 dren). This can easily be arranged for at the intermissions 
 or at the close of the recitations. 
 
 But even then when the children are questioned singly or 
 in smaller groups, they very often make use of words with 
 which they associate either no idea at all or a wrong one. 
 It is advisable, therefore, besides the main question, to put 
 still other side questions to the scholars in order to convince 
 one's self by unconstrained conversation with them, that they 
 have not merely repeated what others answered, or that they 
 are not deceiving themselves. It is hard to induce some 
 children, especially those in the country, to express them- 
 
 i The association sent out question blanks to all the school principals 
 of the capital, with the request that by means of definite questions and 
 answers, they should determine the range of ideas of the Berlin children 
 on entering the lowest class, in so far as it related to the neighborhood.
 
 164 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 selves about what they have seen and heard. Their tongue 
 can be loosened only by the kind manner o'f the teacher; 
 for this purpose he will very often have to converse with 
 them in their own peculiar way of talking in order to free 
 them from their bashfulness. 
 
 We are not afraid that (as Nieden claims in Jahrbuch 
 des V.f.w. Pddagogik, XIV., p. 87) such investigations 
 will determine the existence of only rudimentary and iso- 
 lated ideas. For such questions will always be chosen, an 
 affirmative answer to which will presuppose a definite group 
 or chain of sense-perceptions. If, for instance, the child 
 demonstrates beyond doubt that he has already been in the 
 woods, on a mountain, or in a church ; that he has seen a 
 fish swim in the river or in the pond, then we are well justi- 
 fied in inferring the existence not only of isolated rudi- 
 mentary ideas, but of entire groups of ideas. Or, on the 
 other hand, if a child in Plauen has not yet been in our 
 castle or on the bank of the Elster, then it is certain that 
 he lacks many (if not all) of the separate ideas belonging 
 to the whole idea of "castle" or " river." If, finally, the 
 objection be made that the six-year-old child has perceived 
 and experienced much more than he can designate in words ; 
 that, accordingly, our statistical data will never sufficiently 
 cover the child's field of ideas, we answer that all percepts 
 that are not fixed by words have as good as no value for 
 the recitation; they are too indistinct and fleeting to be 
 used there with success. 
 
 But where, in spite of all, such statistical investigations 
 must be omitted, it ought to be ascertained, by long con- 
 tinued, careful observations, what instruction can presup- 
 pose in the child, a'nd what necessary notions the newly 
 entered pupils, as a rule, are lacking in. That can be ac- 
 complished without a great expenditure of time ; there is
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 165 
 
 only need of the regular noting of such experiences as con- 
 stantly press themselves one by one upon the teacher in 
 every recitation. For instance, each primary teacher should, 
 upon the presentation of new matter, i. e., at the stage of 
 analysis, or preparation, take thorough survey of what 
 contributions the experiences of the children can make to 
 the new topic. If the results of these inquiries are carefully 
 recorded, there will gradually arise "an analysis of the 
 contents of children's minds," which will satisfy all reason- 
 able demands. For only when this has been done will the 
 teacher be fully conscious of a further duty, that of calling 
 up defective ideas, and of strengthening, supplementing 
 and enriching them, together with others that may be present, 
 thus enlarging, arranging, and deepening the pupil's store of 
 experiences. 
 
 In and about the home the child has acquired all the ideas 
 he brings to school ; here dwell the objects of his perceptions, 
 here are found the beginnings of his notions and feelings. 
 It is therefore self-evident that the instruction which is to 
 elaborate and supplement this material, should start with 
 the same sphere of experiences, or, in other words, deal 
 with the surroundings of the child. Because we know that 
 the child on entering school has fully mastered only a limited 
 part of his surroundings, and that many of his home obser- 
 vations need clearing up and sifting, we lead him back into 
 the old familiar world, in which he has heretofore lived, and 
 which is dear to him. We teach him to know it better and 
 to make him more familiar with it we develop a knowl- 
 edge of the home environment (Heimatkunde). 
 
 If we take this word contrary to common usage, in its 
 broadest meaning, we of course do not deal here merely 
 with a preparatory course for geography, for the home com- 
 prises more than the piece of earth where we were born
 
 166 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 and brought up ; it includes also the products of the soil, 
 the plant and animal life, the inhabitants with their .occupa- 
 tions and customs ; so through careful observations of home 
 objects and incidents, our instruction is to secure vivid 
 sense-perceptions for more than one realm of knowledge. 
 
 Geography, history and natural science owe to it the most 
 important elementary ideas; and similarly geometry, arith- 
 metic, instruction in the mother-tongue and in drawing, relate 
 to numerous inner and outer experiences of the child as they 
 come to him in his intercourse with things and people at 
 home. It does not aim to familiarize the child with all the 
 knowledge that a thorough and detailed description of the 
 home might afford, for how could he assimilate all this 
 material so vast, so difficult of apprehension? 
 
 Not the entire home even to its smallest, most insigni- 
 ficant nooks would it present to the pupil, but only so many 
 objects of the same as he may need in order to understand 
 the instruction. It will consequently bring into the field of 
 his observation the most important and most necessary 
 objects of the environment. It will content itself with the 
 production of observations most needed for the lesson : with 
 typical perceptions which he uses most frequently as aids to 
 apperception, and the objects of which are capable of 
 awakening a strong, direct interest in the child. Accord- 
 ingly Pestalozzi's ' ' hole in the wall-paper " is just as much 
 to be excluded from this home-knowledge as those empty, 
 extremely prosaic things chosen from considerations of thor- 
 oughness for purposes of object teaching, such as boot- 
 jacks, horse-shoes, slippers, night-tapers, coal-shovels, pitch- 
 forks, and all similar objects smuggled in through the 
 "normal words" of the reading and writing method, and in 
 themselves unlikely to elicit the interest of the pupil. 
 
 We remind the reader of the following favorite objects
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 167 
 
 mentioned in most of our primers : ax, hook, wheel, paper- 
 bag, saw, club, cane, etc. 
 
 This home-observation lesson, futhermore, should deal 
 only with such things as belong to the personal expe- 
 riences of the child, which he can really observe with his 
 own eyes and ears ; whatever things lie beyond the horizon 
 of home if ever so interesting as for instance strange 
 animals and plants, as long as they cannot be observed at 
 home or explained through visible home-objects, are abso- 
 lutely to be excluded. Likewise we should guard against a 
 general discussion about the seasons, the garden, the mea- 
 dows, water, etc. Prefatory reflections such as the follow- 
 ing are often assigned to observation lessons : " descrip- 
 tion of spring, summer, autumn and winter in general," 
 " general review of the garden and garden work," "descrip- 
 tion of the meadows and fields in general," ' ' the forest in gen- 
 eral."- Such general observations as do not emanate from 
 a fullness of concrete single perceptions, stand on the same 
 footing with those abstract and fruitless exercises in think- 
 ing and speaking with which formerly our youth were 
 tormented. Consequently instead of taking a course that 
 has to do neither with home nor with observation lessons 
 and would improve the pupil in nothing, we should rather 
 always start from a definite forest, mountain, pond, or river 
 of the neighborhood, and always return to it, if thereby we can 
 lift obscure and unsettled ideas into clearness. For not the 
 general, but only the particular, the special, the, individual, 
 can be an object of this home-observation lesson. 
 
 From the school-room and the school-house, to which our 
 little ones first pay attention, we lead them into the school 
 garden, with whose kitchen plants, flowering shrubs and fruit 
 trees they become familiar, whose inhabitants (bugs, bees, 
 ants, snails, birds), they can watch in their life and work.
 
 168 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 In field and meadow there is offered no less rich and inter- 
 esting material for observation : the manifold labors of the 
 farmer and the herder, and the most important products of the 
 field in the different stages of their development. Over hill, 
 mountain and valley we ramble through the woods, with 
 whose trees, fruits and animals, together with their manage- 
 ment, we become familiar under the friendly guidance of 
 the forester. We go down to the nearest creek, river or 
 pond in order to observe the aquatic animals as well as the 
 fisher and trapper, who catch them ; we follow the course 
 of the water down to the mill, which we inspect minutely, 
 and which furnishes an occasion to discuss the question how 
 bread is prepared. We observe the native sky with its 
 clouds and stars, we learn to take our bearings according to 
 the points of the compass and to notice the changes of the 
 day and the season ; we observe the phenomena of the 
 thunderstorm, count the colors of the rainbow, gaze with 
 interest upon the flocks of birds of passage which pass 
 through the sky in the spring and autumn. And as in 
 the village we have become acquainted with the most 
 important occupations of the farmer and the forester, 
 the simplest human dwellings, the farmyard with its domestic 
 animals, so in the city we visit, as convenient opportunity 
 offers, the workshops of the mechanic, who will disclose to 
 us the construction of the most necessary utensils and tools, 
 the building lot of the mason and carpenter, the factories 
 of the most important industries. We follow the principal 
 streets, upon which moves the home traffic, and even where 
 we find a remarkable building, perhaps an old castle, a 
 palace, a church, a city hall, we tarry with special interest. 
 This home instruction demands therefore a wandering through 
 the home neighborhood in all directions ; it requires of the 
 child a continued observation of what is and what transpires
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 169 
 
 in its surroundings. This kind of instruction would com- 
 pletely miss its purpose if, instead of the objects them- 
 selves, it were perhaps to present merely pictures, such as are 
 so popular in the pictorial lessons of our schools ; or if it 
 were to start from the lifeless card and try to show the child 
 what it can learn only in and out of the home itself ; or if 
 it were to attempt to overcome the deficiencies of the child's 
 perception through scattered descriptions borrowed from a 
 text-book and through the mere word of the teacher. 
 
 It is . certainly self-deception to ascribe to language the 
 power ' ' to transfer the observations of the speaker to the 
 listener (to wit, the child) with the full force of the sense 
 impression and to awaken in the listener the feelings of the 
 speaker with like vividness." The liveliest representation 
 by the teacher is never able to replace or render unnecessary 
 the child's personal observations ; he himself must see 
 and hear, must observe with his senses the things .the 
 perception of which he is to share. And since in gen- 
 eral things do not come to men, or to children either (be- 
 cause this in many cases is impossible or impracticable), 
 therefore the school has to take the children to the things. 
 
 This is done if from the start there is a school-garden at 
 the disposal of the pupils (at least those of the city), con- 
 taining the most important plants cultivated at home, and 
 the children are required to work in the garden during certain 
 hours, and to attend to the beds assigned them and to watch 
 the gradual development of the plants ; or if regular excur- 
 sions are arranged about the home or to the neighboring vil- 
 lage or city. Each of these school excursions should have 
 a definite aim and object, a specific purpose ; the excursions 
 should occur, not occasionally, " for a change and recreation 
 on some of the free afternoons in summer,"- with such 
 palliative remedy, such homoeopathic pills, some seek to
 
 170 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 satisfy the pedagogic conscience and to meet one of 
 the most important didactic principles, but as often as 
 it becomes necessary to furnish thorough observations re- 
 lating to some definite subject of instruction. We are 
 aware that on account of the difficulties connected there- 
 with, particularly in over-crowded schools, these excursions 
 solely for purposes of instruction do not find general favor, 
 and that men have sought to ridicule them as time-wasting 
 "bumming," as an "expensive and diverting innovation," 
 a "pedantic and sensational expedient." l 
 
 1 It depends entirely upon how these excursions are arranged. We have 
 already shown above, that the object is not to divert the children, but 
 rather to instruct them ; to each of them is assigned a definite plan, a defi- 
 nite task. We insist upon it, that this task shall be really accomplished 
 by the pupils, that they do not observe superficially and inaccurately, but 
 give an explicit account of their perceptions at the place of observation. 
 There need be no talk therefore about " useless bumming," and just as 
 little about pedantry and ennui. On the contrary we know of no other 
 lessons in which the pupils listen with greater pleasure and interest to 
 the words of the teacher, or are more eagerly given to observation. These 
 excursions place them once more into their wonted sphere, and there 
 the teacher appears no longer as the strict master, but rather as a father 
 who associates with them familiarly. In this way the children and the 
 teacher learn to know and to love one another better. 
 
 This is an educational agency, which, at a time when there is so much 
 tendency to regard intellectual culture as the chief object of the school, 
 deserves to be emphasized all the more strongly. And what about the 
 criticism that our excursions take too much time? As if the method 
 which carries on home-knowledge within the four school walls, with 
 mere empty words, did not waste still more time! This in truth wastes 
 the entire time, for it builds on sand and does not yield clear-headed 
 intellects, but shallow, pretentious braggarts. The hours devoted to 
 our excursions are not at all lost, hut inasmuch as upon the clearness of 
 /our perceptions depends clearness of thought even in most remote regions 
 of abstract ideas, they will bear fruit a hundred fold. Moreover we are 
 not of the opinion that these excursions are to be shifted to the leisure 
 hours. It is but fair that the teacher be not oppressed with a now bur- 
 den by this work, inasmuch as he finds in them additional labor rather 
 than recreation. A definite time should therefore be allotted to them in 
 the study plan, jx-rhaps the last afternoon lesson, under some circum-
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 171 
 
 But the necessity of these excursions for all teaching 
 that attempts to base the perceptions of the pupils on home 
 impressions is not removed by the use of opprobrious 
 terms. Besides, Bartholonuii has shown in an excellent 
 treatise that school excursions in the manner just indicated 
 are really possible and practicable even in large cities. 1 
 
 stances even a whole afternoon, and they should be put on an equality 
 with the ordinary work of teaching, even if it were only in order to meet 
 any unjustifiable objections of the parents. As for the pretended expeu- 
 siveness of our excursions, we freely admit to have had something in our 
 mind quite different from most of our modern school rambling. We do 
 not at all approve the fashionable mania, which unfortunately has to an 
 extent also seized the minds of our children, which for a genuine excur- 
 sion would require at least the crossing of the state line and a long ride in 
 the cars. We hold the conviction, that generally there is too mach 
 riding and too little walking, that therefore a superficial knowledge and a 
 certain depreciation of the home is likely to result. " Distance lends 
 enchantment," etc. 
 
 Against such disloyalty towards the home the school must do its share 
 of work, and for this reason we have not in mind expensive railroad trips 
 and grand journeys, but simple foot-ramblings within the limits of home, 
 which, in case the mother provides the little ones with some luncheon at 
 home, can easily be arranged at an expense of a few pennies. In most 
 cases the trips will, of course, not cause the least outlay. 
 
 1 About excursions with reference to large cities (Jahrbuch d. V.f. w. 
 P., pp. 209-49). Our excursions will of course meet with great difficul- 
 ties in large cities, in over-crowded schools, and also for the want of 
 good sense on the part of some parents. There it is best to divide the 
 school into sections for this purpose, not to mind the talk of the idle 
 crowd, and finally to overcome through the devoted and faithful discharge 
 of our duties, the prejudices of parents who do not understand the 
 importance and necessity of our efforts. At least one capable teacher, Dr. 
 Bartholomai, succeeded in this way even in a city like Berlin in carrying 
 out these school-excursions regularly. He, too, found idle starers, who 
 cracked jokes at his expense, and he heard it now and then said by the 
 Berlin philistines, " that the children's clothes and shoes were being 
 ruined uselessly " ; but he maintained his purpose. Now, what was car- 
 ried out there under proportionately much less favorable conditions, can, 
 I think, also be carried out at every other place. Let us, therefore, 
 give a trial to these instructive walks, calculated to strengthen the body 
 of the child and to make his home dear to him ; do not let us begrudge
 
 172 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 If, finally, in the upper grades a little journey were added 
 annually that would extend the sphere of vision of the pupils 
 beyond the nearest surroundings, sufficient opportunity 
 would be offered to further the concrete ideas in which our 
 pupils are so deficient. 1 
 
 For it is precisely to such indispensable external observa- 
 tions, which pupils commonly lack upon entering school 
 (every part of the country, every place has some very 
 striking and interesting peculiarities), that home knowledge 
 has to direct its special attention. Thus, if our children 
 have not yet seen the sun rise and know practically nothing 
 of the moon and the stars, we let them in morning prome- 
 nades and evening walks observe the native sky long enough 
 to gain the desired information. If, as in the case of a 
 village situated on a wide plateau, they have found no 
 opportunity to form ideas about mountain, creek and river, 
 
 our little ones these pleasant excursions, which fill their minds with new 
 ideas, and open heart and soul to the fatherly friend, who honestly shares 
 with them trouble and hardships! 
 
 'How in relation to this the home may prepare for and assist the 
 school is shown by Sigismund's suggestive paper, The Family as a School 
 of Nature, only we should guard against one error that may frequently 
 be noticed in families and kindergartens. Many parents and educators 
 go too far in the effort, praiseworthy in itself, of giving the child as many 
 ideas as possible, preparing him for the exercise of his powers of appre- 
 ciation in the work of the coming school. They overwhelm and divert 
 him with a multitude of pictures, the subjects of which either go far 
 beyond his understanding and experience or which can be observed in 
 nature with much greater profit. By this his apperceptive attention is 
 considerably lessened, because the ]>erceptu>n produced by the picture 
 leaves much fainter ideas than the observation of the things themselves. 
 Instead of such shadow- like observations gained through pictures, that 
 forestall the actual, sensuous experience of the child, and produce a 
 hollow make-believe intelligence without interest and intent, it is 
 preferable to have none. Then at least nothing is spoiled. " For what 
 I have not yet learned to know at all, I learn easier than what I have 
 previously begun to learn in the wrong way." Roch, Gymnasialpada- 
 yogik, p. 129.
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 173 
 
 we direct our first travels towards these objects. If city 
 children bring with them very insufficient ideas of large 
 standing waters, then the school-trip aims to reach a 
 neighboring lake or large pond ; if factory children, in most 
 cases unnecessarily deficient in observations of field and 
 forest, come to school, then the latter should first (and oftener 
 than the city) be considered as an objective point of the ex- 
 cursions. But not merely the lacking observations, but 
 also the numerous observations which the child brings to 
 school, have to be considered in the lessons on home knowl- 
 edge. For many of their observations are positively wrong, 
 many of them so superficial and imperfect that they urgently 
 need to be repeated, strengthened, corrected and supple- 
 mented. It is needful to fix the attention of the child, so 
 likely to touch only the surface of things, upon definite ob- 
 jects of perception, to lead him from his crude ideas of things 
 as wholes to ideas of the parts of these things, to make these 
 clear in themselves, and in an orderly synthesis enable him 
 again to reach a distinct whole ; that is, to form genuine, clear 
 sense-perceptions. It is needful, in drawing and coloring, 
 in simple pictorial representations of the observed thing 
 and in its correct naming, to enhance the clearness of 
 the involved ideas. It is needful to put into the varied 
 multiplicity of the acquired observations a certain order, 
 which of course in no way approaches a scientific arrange- 
 ment. The reply to the important question in what succes- 
 sion to deal with the objects of observation, will essentially 
 depend on the place of home-knowledge in the school, as an 
 independent subject of instruction or as an adjunct of some 
 other subject. Against the independent lessons as demanded 
 by KarlRichter, Juetting and others, and commonly followed 
 in the school practice of to-day, there are weighty objec- 
 tions. All its ingenious grouping of ideas is inadequate to
 
 174 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 hide the arbitrariness with which it proceeds in their selec- 
 tion. Convincing reasons for the proposed succession of 
 objects are mostly wanting a sign that here the theory 
 does not rest on a sure scientific basis. The lack of an 
 orderly selection of home-material in accordance with uni- 
 versally admitted principles weighs, indeed, heavily upon 
 the teacher. Consequently the children, too, usually do 
 not know why just this or that object is taken up in the 
 lessons ; the thread is missing that should unite all the 
 various home observations, thus insuring cohesion, per 
 mauence and interest. Indeed, the teacher is easily misled, 
 through the feeling of this want, to anticipate their logical 
 connection and arrangement into abstract notions and systems 
 and to strive for a completeness in single groups of observa- 
 tion, for which the child at the time feels neither the need 
 nor the interest. We transgress also against the law of ap- 
 perception, in offering subject-matter to the child with 
 which he is in part so fully conversant that he finds it 
 difficult to interest himself in it independently. To offer 
 for observation and in the same form during many -succes- 
 sive lessons things with which the child is perfectly familiar 
 produces languor. The things of the nearest surroundings 
 awaken the childish interest only if they are used in rela- 
 tion to other subject-matter, and thus viewed in the light of 
 another sphere of thought. Finally this independent object- 
 teaching heaps up, in the first two or three school years that 
 are usually assigned to it, a number of ideas without being 
 able to insure their immediate or speedy use. It keeps a 
 cargo of observations valuable enough in themselves in store ; 
 these undoubtedly obstruct one another and must steadily lose 
 in mobility for purposes of apperception, t. e., the power of 
 energetically uniting themselves with other ideas. The health 
 of the intellectual life suffers if we give several years to the
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 175 
 
 task of gathering ideas tending to apperception and post- 
 pone to later years the exercise of their apperceptive ten- 
 dencies. This is contrary to the child's wonted practice 
 of restlessly working with his limited intellectual capital. 
 The saying " In rest, I rust" applies also to ideas stored 
 exclusively for future use. Besides it is well to consider 
 that great apperceptive mobility exists only in ideas that 
 are linked with our personal interests by vivid feelings and 
 inclinations. 
 
 It does not suffice that we have seen an object and viewed 
 it closely ; we should also in our experience and in intimate 
 intercourse thoroughly assimilate whatever is to unfold with- 
 in us into strong activity. 
 
 The dear places of home where we liked best to play, the 
 animals and the people with which we held special inter- 
 course, the roads upon which we could accompany our 
 father through the woods or fields, the grass-plot or the 
 woodland meadow where we celebrated our splendid juve- 
 nile festivals, these always present themselves first as the 
 strongest and ever present aids to apperception. If, now, 
 the practice of independent object-teaching attempts in the 
 first two or three school years to accumulate beforehand and 
 to lift into clearness nearly all those important ideas which 
 in a succeeding stage of instruction are to serve as aids to ap- 
 perception, may we then presume that the six to eight-year- 
 old child has learned by continued intercourse to know 
 familiarly and to love all the various objects to be discussed 
 subsequently? Is it really conceivable that the eight-year- 
 old child should have closed the round of his home experi- 
 ences and now have to meet nothing essentially new ? This 
 is denied by the fact that the boy, from the time when 
 he can risk and plan independent excursions, starts out all 
 the more upon new discoveries ; that his home, the farther
 
 176 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 he explores it, presents to him ever more new and attrac- 
 tive experiences. Moreover, it is impossible, in the first three 
 school years, to exhaust the sphere of home observations, 
 and much of it at so early a period lies beyond the child's un- 
 derstanding, as, for instance, the significance of modern means 
 of communication, of industry, and of certain institutions 
 of state and church. Here then we have to await the favor- 
 able opportunity when, as instruction progresses, the under- 
 standing for such things can be rendered easy. If accord- 
 ingly the child becomes interested in home objects and is 
 attracted by them only very gradually , and no farther than he 
 enters into relations of personal interest with them ; if for the 
 formation of these intimate relations a few years do not 
 suffice, but the whole period of youth is required, do not then 
 many of the ideas, awakened by the independent observation 
 lessons during the first school-years, seem like empty nuts 
 devoid of life and germinating force? Do they not confine 
 the child, lesson upon lesson, to natural objects that can 
 mean nothing at all to his mind, because he has had no 
 experience with them? Do not children in this way collect 
 stores that are wanting beforehand in apperceptional mobility ? 
 All these evils can be avoided, if, in accord with Ziller's 
 plan, the establishment and extension of the sphere of home 
 experience is not assigned to a special subject, but to all 
 subjects of instruction, especially to history, literature and 
 science. By these subjects it must be determined, from time 
 to time, what things are to be closely examined. Not system- 
 atically and in the tame way common to travelers' guide books 
 is the home to be gone through with and described, but ever as 
 the needs of instruction may demand it we turn to the home 
 environment. Where, for instance, it is desirable to bring 
 historic distances within the grasp of the child's mind, or to 
 present to his view strange customs and institutions, then
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 177 
 
 we see to it that the pupil may find the needed representative 
 images and perceptions through careful observation in and 
 about the home. 
 
 For fairy tales and legends, for sacred and profane his- 
 tory, for geography and natural science, for arithmetic and 
 form study, we seek as occasion requires typical objects and 
 conditions for purposes of instruction. In this way the study 
 of the home surroundings will from the beginning and in 
 every grade receive in regard to its subject-matter definite 
 direction from the material and formal subjects of the curric- 
 ulum. 
 
 This limitation of the material of home-knowledge re- 
 leases the " thoughtful teacher from the sense of oppression 
 that always attends the feeling of entire indefiniteness as 
 regards teaching matter" ;* for he knows why he handles just 
 this or that subject, and from which point of view it is 
 to be regarded for the purpose in hand. While, further, 
 the analytic material of home-knowledge enters into closest 
 communication with the subject-matter of the synthetically 
 progressing branches of instruction, especially with the living 
 scenes of history," the objects about home receive a pecu- 
 liar illustration, a particular interest. In the light of his- 
 tory, of geographical description, or of the contemplation of 
 strange, interesting scenes, products and occurrences, home 
 appears to the child dearer and more significant as it becomes 
 to him more intelligible and familiar. Finally, the fact 
 that the material of home-knowledge is not crowded together 
 into two years, but distributed over many years among the 
 various subjects of instruction, affords still further important 
 advantages. The teacher is not so apt to fall into the fatal 
 error of assuming that by two or three years of instruction 
 in home-knowledge he has in every direction supplied the 
 
 1 Rein, Pickel and Scheller, Erstes Schuljahr, 3. Aufl. S. 100.
 
 178 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 needed aids to apperception and that he may now be released 
 from the obligation of attending to close and accurate direct 
 observations. On the other hand, the pupil is not misled, 
 as a result, to hurry through the home surroundings within 
 the narrow school room, but frequent excursions and his own 
 observations help him in the course of his entire youth to 
 obtain a picture of home, which a forced instruction in two 
 short school years would have endeavored in vain to produce. 
 Since this instruction does not seek to reap the entire harvest 
 at once, but gives the pupil time to enter gradually into close 
 relationship with the objects of his neighborhood, it affords 
 him from year to year more enlarged views, invested with a 
 lively interest and capable of speedy assimilation with re- 
 lated ideas. Furthermore, if home experiences are not 
 stored for years in advance, but always only at the time and 
 in the place where needed in the course of instruction, and 
 where they at once can have the strongest effect, then there 
 is insured to them the power of apperception, the right con- 
 nection with other spheres of thought. In short the analyt- 
 ical observation lessons connected with the various subjects 
 of instruction of succeeding school years is best able 
 to lead to the various provinces of knowledge those fresh 
 springs of apperceiviug ideas as they arise from the home 
 experience of every one. 
 
 However, we do not conceal from ourselves the many 
 difficulties that at present beset its establishment in our 
 schools. We shall not place additional stress here on the 
 difficulties, presented in the first edition of this work, 
 whether and how it is possible to obtain the lacking aids 
 to apperception in school excursions at the very time when 
 they are needed for purposes of instruction, in factory 
 towns where the teacher cannot dispose of the leisure time 
 of his pupils as he chooses, in a mountainous district in the
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 179 
 
 winter time, where roads and paths are snowed under and 
 many objects of observation are inaccessible, or in cases 
 where unforeseen natural occurrences like continual rains 
 have set in. For it is a matter of course that in the 
 warmer season, when a favorable opportunity presents itself, 
 many an observation should be taken in advance and in its 
 full details, although it may not find application in the 
 studies for several weeks or months ; but such exceptions 
 do not change the rule. 
 
 Of more weight, however, is the other fact, that this in- 
 cidental home-knowledge is not reconcilable with every 
 form of the course of studies. Its successful conduct pre- 
 supposes at least for each school year a unified historical 
 body of knowledge into which the home-knowledge can 
 readily enter ; also a patient tarrying with it, not a hasty 
 running through with fragmentary patches of material. 
 Dry guide-like reviews of universal history or detached 
 Bible-stories, selected with a view to presenting subjects in 
 concentric circles, do not answer the purpose. So long as 
 preference is given to these, so long as a unified course of 
 study derived strictly from the object of education does 
 not make itself more strongly felt, and widely differing 
 opinions concerning the content and sequence of the matter 
 selected prevail even among the friends of this method, 
 Ziller's proposition cannot gain general adoption. But that 
 it implies an important step in advance, that the future 
 belongs to it, is our conviction derived from a varied practical 
 experience. 
 
 In this we are finally confirmed also by historical consid- 
 erations. It is well known that the time lies not so very 
 far back when the public school engaged in special ab- 
 stract exercises in thinking and speaking, thus wearying 
 the children and giving joy to none. This was based on
 
 180 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 the wholly correct view, that knowledge without under- 
 standing can be of no use, that the pupil has intellectually 
 appropriated only that of which he can freely dispose 
 in speech and writing. To think and to speak are conditions 
 and fruits of an educational intellectual culture. The error 
 lay in the assumption that these exercises had to be confined 
 to special lessons. Thus that was isolated which should 
 be the object of every lesson, of each branch of study in its 
 special province. The subject of home-knowledge is ap- 
 parently in a similar condition. It is generally recognized 
 that our thinking even in the highest abstract regions de- 
 pends on sense-perception, and that without this firm founda- 
 tion the results of instruction are quite doubtful and tran- 
 sient. And yet from this it does not follow that one should 
 teach by itself, in a special course, what can not be left to a 
 particular subject in later instruction. That would be like 
 arguing as follows : Since thinking and speaking are among the 
 most important activities of the pupil, therefore there should be 
 special lessons in thinking and speaking. Possibly, it will 
 here too, soon be generally admitted, that separate obser- 
 vation exercises unconnected with the principal school studies 
 of the public school are just as superfluous as those thinking 
 and speaking exercises. Perhaps it will then be conceded 
 that to start from the home observations is not the task of 
 one but of most branches, and that here a principle is in- 
 volved, which must be heeded not only in one or two, but in 
 every school year. 
 
 Consequently, then, home-knowledge is not a study corres- 
 ponding to a definite department of instruction. But inas- 
 much as it treats of material home-observation, it serves as 
 an analytic step in nearly all branches of study, and consti- 
 tutes through all the school years an essential component 
 of them. How much in particular the realistic branches need
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 181 
 
 these continual references to home experience, how only 
 through fresh ideas derived from home-impressions, the diffi- 
 cult provinces of history and geography, for instance, can 
 be mastered, cannot be emphasized too often or too urgently. 
 We have already seen, what peculiar demands these branches 
 make upon the intellectual activity of the pupil. In geog- 
 raphy he is mentally to hasten through thousands of miles 
 with lightning speed, and at the enumeration of great num- 
 bers of square and linear miles is to form a fair idea of the 
 world and to associate sense impression with his words. 
 Under the guidance of the teacher he is to travel in strange 
 countries and to present to himself a vivid living picture of 
 strange cities and men, he is to raise in his imagination the 
 snowcapped mountains of the Old and of the New World, and 
 to let his vision sweep over boundless expanses of giant 
 streams and oceans. He is to feel the oppressive solitude 
 of the desert and of the primeval forest as if he were a 
 traveller; and stretches of country which it took years to 
 explore, he is to survey and describe in a twinkling as 
 he would an open book or a level field. But this is only 
 possible if the pupil can draw upon the store of his own 
 experience ; he can comprehend the words of the teacher 
 only in so far as he succeeds in forming similar familiar 
 ideas. These constitute the elementary materials out of 
 which the extensive edifice of geographical knowledge can 
 alone be composed, the foundations and main supports upon 
 which this mass of related ideas can rest securely. Where 
 those aids to apperception are wanting, and the new finds 
 no echo in the mind of the scholar, he is unable to follow 
 the clearest and most vivid discourse, since he only hears 
 words, nothing but words. A child that has not yet ob- 
 tained an idea of a kilometer, a mile, a hectare, of a 
 plateau or a valley, that has not at some time marked out
 
 182 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 and sketched a plan of his home neighborhood, where he 
 can readily find his way, that is wanting in the simplest 
 of rudimentary ideas for geographical study, cannot have 
 much of an idea of a square mile, of a plateau of ter- 
 raced lands, nor show a real understanding of maps, and 
 even the most perfect geographical study imparts to him 
 nothing but indefinite, shadow-like ideas, and numerous unin- 
 telligible names. The same applies to history. If it at- 
 tempts to bring before the pupil the civilization of the most 
 important nations, if it tells him of the most varied gov- 
 ernments and religious systems, or travels with him to the 
 historic monuments of his native country and describes to 
 him the splendor of the chivalry of the middle ages, the 
 important inventions, the great wars of modern times, it 
 can hope to create a deep enduring impression on the pupil's 
 mind only in so far as its words result in the vivid repro- 
 duction of older similar ideas. We demand the impossible 
 when we expect from a pupil who has grown up in a se- 
 cluded place remote from public life and who, therefore, 
 knows little of the most important state regulations, of the 
 most prominent church and state authorities, of laws and 
 taxes, of stations and ranks, of the manner in which the 
 power of government in the modern state is divided, that 
 he should transfer himself into the political life of the 
 Spartans and Athenians and to understand the legislation 
 of a Lycurgus and a Solon. 
 
 We preach to deaf ears when we speak of Olympic games 
 or mediaeval tournaments before the pupils have had an op- 
 portunity at public festivals at home, to obtain aids to apper- 
 ception (however immature) for the new historic material. 
 Indeed, even historic material that relates to times and events 
 comparatively close at hand, as for instance, the story of the 
 origin of the German cities, and German citizenship, of the
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 183 
 
 heroic deeds of our knights, presupposes greater preparation 
 in personal observations than is usually demanded : for 
 what would be the most brillant and popular discourse to a 
 pupil who does not know from his own observation the vari- 
 ous vocations of the people, who has never stood before the 
 decaying outer wall of an old town, and who has never visited 
 and closely inspected the ivy-clad ruins and quaint castles of 
 his home? We are too apt to underrate the demands upon 
 the mental capacity of the pupil made by the historical and 
 geographical studies ; we presuppose in him a great store of 
 experiences, an abundance of sense perceptions and ethical 
 observations, of fundamental ideas of time and space, which 
 he has either not at all or else not with the desirable clear- 
 ness. No wonder that it is just here that the results .of the 
 studies are not in any way commensurate with the trouble and 
 time spent upon them, and that after leaving school the in- 
 fluence of the school is dissipated nowhere more speedily than 
 in these two provinces of knowledge. Geographical and his- 
 torical instruction that does not seek its best help in the home 
 observation of the child plays on a piano without strings. 
 For only in and about home can be obtained most easily and 
 surely those perceptions, external observations and element- 
 ary notions, the reproduction of which gives to the words 
 of the teacher a living content and to the mere symbol the 
 corresponding thing, and which alone secures apperception 
 in any study. 
 
 Now as it is impossible to establish all these aids to ap- 
 perception in the object-teaching of the first school years, 
 much less effectively to store them for future use, we recom- 
 mend the extension of instruction in home-knowledge to all 
 the school years. In accordance with the opportunities in 
 the synthetic progress of the school studies, the teacher 
 should see to it that the pupil may obtain upon the founda-
 
 184 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 tion of numerous observations at home, those indispensable 
 geographical ideas of creek, river, tributary, source and 
 mouth, island, peninsula and isthmus, plateau and valley, 
 watershed, mountain crest and pass, etc. He should exercise 
 him diligently in measuring and calculating stretches of road 
 and areas. Thus he will form iu his local home-experience 
 clear and distinct ideas of geographical measurements. 
 These measurements should be closely related to the daily 
 observations of the child ; the extent of an acre, a mile or a 
 square mile, he should at all times be able to relate to a 
 neighboring piece of ground or meadow, a certain section 
 of the road, the division lines of his home district. He is 
 also to become acquainted with the different soils of the 
 home district, also with its swampy, sandy and barren tracts, 
 so that he may have at hand definite appropriate images for 
 the marshes, deserts and plains of geography lessons. 
 He should group and compare what he has by degrees 
 observed concerning the changes of temperature, the posi- 
 tion of the sun during the different seasons, the gains and 
 losses of day and night, the apparent changes of the moon, 
 and should sketch a map of the celestial bodies with which 
 he has become familiar. Finally this study will train the 
 pupil, and this is not the least of its task, to draw an outline 
 map not only of his residence town, but also of the entire 
 home district, as far as it is familiar to him, and so to live 
 into an understanding of the map. 
 
 In a similar manner historical instruction should seek to 
 gain the most necessary observations and concepts. The 
 public buildings or native town or neighboring city, the 
 official proclamations of the authorities, the public elections, 
 all offer occasion to instruct the child about the most import- 
 ant local and state authorities, about the functions and 
 duties of the court and civil officers, about the leaders of
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 185 
 
 the churches and schools. In the forest and on the prairie 
 can easily be gained a picture of the primeval conditions of 
 the native soil at a time when no man's foot crossed the 
 woods ; while on the other hand perhaps legends and 
 chronicles of the foundation of the native place afford an 
 insight into the conditions under which as a rule the settle- 
 ments of our ancestors came about, and to show in what 
 manner out of the obscurity of the forest there rose by 
 degrees, single farms or entire villages. The giant graves 
 and heathen places of sacrifice, to which the children flock 
 with their teacher, the numerous legends of river-nymphs 
 and water-sprites, of otter-kings, dwarfs and other mouutam- 
 spirits, the superstitious native customs ("\Valpurgis-fire, 
 Christmas and New- Year superstitions) of which our children 
 can give many vivid accounts, are sufficient to transfer them 
 into the old heathen time, when our ancestors served "Wodan 
 or Swantevit, with the same reality with which a lone 
 forest chapel, or an old decaying church ruin brings before 
 the mind the centuries of a Bonifacius, or an Adalbert of 
 Prague. The old castles and palaces of home which we 
 visit frequently and inspect closely, give the pupil a clear 
 idea of the dwellings and also in part of the occupations of 
 the mediaeval nobility, while the extensive lands of the neigh- 
 boring manor-house, beside which even now the scattered 
 properties of the other villagers almost disappear, afford in- 
 ferences as to the social and economical conditions of the 
 peasants under the feudal system, and the relation between 
 the lord of the castle and his serfs. Impressive and eloquent 
 stories are told by the old walls of the native city with its 
 loop-holes, battlements and gates, an old tower, a decaying 
 monastery of past times ; in vivid directness they lead the 
 child back to the times of his mediieval ancestors. Thus he 
 gains in such observations at home a foundation for the de-
 
 186 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 scriptions of German city life, upon which he finds a ready 
 and secure foot-hold for apperception. Finally we render 
 the pupil familiar with the origin and significance of certain 
 popular festivals of home, search after the traces of great 
 wars, which, unfortunately, may be found in almost every 
 district of our fatherland, old Swedish trenches, a desert 
 from the time of the Thirty Years' War, or Seven Years' War, 
 a French cross on the public road, a monument in the centre 
 of a field or in the church, a memorial tablet or a " peace- 
 oak " of more modern origin: thus there will not be 
 wanting material for analytic study relating even to most 
 recent history. 
 
 Of course the sources are not alike copious in all parts of 
 the country, and local conditions limit the teacher in many 
 ways, especially in country schools. But certainly no lo- 
 cality is so poor in historic evidences, no home so entirely 
 new that it does not offer something for the contemplation 
 and inspection of the child, from which the study of history 
 may start. 
 
 But while we thus extend the historical and geographical 
 sphere of experiences of the children, inducing them to ac- 
 count for a number of facts, occurrences and objects of 
 home, while we lead them again and again to the field 
 of the dearest experiences of their youth, so that they 
 may obtain clear apperceiviug ideas for their studies, we 
 still insist that the observations of home-knowledge should 
 not be left off at all, that they should continue to the 
 last school year of the pupil. In the home the child's 
 powers are deeply rooted, here arise the springs of our 
 clearest perceptions .and deepest feelings. Therefore, we 
 should not merely through two or three short school years 
 foster and preserve these springs in the child, but as long 
 as he sits at our feet may the sun at home shine into the nar-
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 187 
 
 row schoolroom and make learning a joy and one of the 
 most cheering reminiscences of youth. 
 
 Like the home ideas, so too can all other experiences of the 
 pupil, all that in other ways has grown strong and vigorous 
 within him, serve as apperception aids in the studies. Here 
 belong particularly the ideas and thoughts stimulated by 
 instruction in previous grades, in so far as the material was 
 chosen according to right rules and transformed into mental 
 power. To know and to investigate these just as accurately 
 as the spheres of the pupil's home experience is an indis- 
 pensable duty of the teacher. When all instruction from the 
 beginning is exclusively in his hands he familiarizes himself 
 in the school work itself with the child's whole store of knowl- 
 edge. Difficulties arise, however, in institutions ; the work 
 of instruction is apportioned among a number of teachers. 
 Here it is desirable also for other pedagogic reasons 
 not to change teachers every year with the advancing grades, 
 but to entrust the children to the same teacher as long as 
 feasible, and to limit the system of department teaching as 
 much as possible in favor of grade teaching. But where 
 this is not possible, the tea.cher should at least be put in a 
 position through a course of study carefully laid out in every 
 particular, through a conscientiously kept record of the 
 results obtained during the course, and also through a 
 lively pedagogic intercourse among the various co-laborers, 
 to form a clear idea of the store of his pupils' ideas 
 assimilated in the previous instruction. He must diligently 
 inquire after what they have already learned in a certain 
 direction, and how they have learned it, so that he may not 
 suppose the unknown to be familiar or serve up the familiar 
 as something quite new. Do not chide us for demanding too 
 much in this respect from the teacher. If in ordinary life a 
 housekeeper should never examine the condition of his house-
 
 188 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 hold goods, but lay in new stores without regard to those on 
 hand, his management could not be of long continuance. 
 For like reasons the law menaces with severe penalty the 
 merchant who does not make an inventory of his stock. 
 Should that which is thus inadmissible in the material world 
 be permitted in the spiritual? Certainly still less. And so 
 the common demand is made of the teacher not to let any- 
 thing essential be lost of the stores already gathered in 
 study by the pupil, but to make good use of it as a wel- 
 come aid to apperception, and to connect with it, as well 
 as with the home sphere of experiences, all that is new. 
 
 When our Saviour desired duly to impress his listenei'8 
 with a religious truth he frequently chose a parable, an 
 example, a story, in which quite common, well-known facts 
 served to explain a new religious thought. The divine 
 thoughts are presented by the Lord in a dress that corres- 
 ponds with the country, the customs and usages, the daily 
 labors and vocations of his people ; he descends into the 
 realm of thought and feelings of his countrymen in order to 
 transform them from within, and to prepare their minds 
 for the reception of his words. The laud, the seed, the. 
 sower, the harvest, lilies and weeds, thorns and thistles, 
 the shepherd and the flock, the vineyard and the vine, the 
 fisher and the net, the merchant, he who seeks costly pearls, 
 the publican all these men and things of common life, old 
 and familiar, become the vessel in which Jesus offers the 
 new, his gospel of the kingdom of God. The simplest, 
 best known incidents and conditions of life he takes up, 
 for the purpose of teaching by them the spiritual truths of 
 the heavenly kingdom, as if to entwine them in one another. 
 Wholly after the manner his own sayings : " Every scribe 
 which is instructed unto the Kingdom of Heaven is like unto 
 a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 189 
 
 treasure things new and old" (Matt. 13: 52). " Ye have 
 heard that it was said by them of old time ; but I say unto 
 you," so he leads from the ethical views of his time over to 
 purer, higher principles. " The heavenly kingdom is like," 
 thus the words fall, time and again, from his lips. 
 
 He holds before the people a mirror of life where each 
 can see and learn to judge for himself. Like an artist, he 
 presents forms before the mental eye, all of which have a 
 deep significance and are symbols of a great truth. Here 
 he depicts God as a father who gives a commission to his 
 son, or hastens with open arms to the one lost and found 
 again, while he reproves the envy of the self-righteous 
 brother ; or he is a father who gives good gifts to his chil- 
 dren ; who feeds the birds of heaven, and sympathizes with 
 his rational creatures. Here, God is a King who is about 
 to reckon with his servants ; there, a rich lord who prepares 
 a supper; now, a householder, who confers with the gar- 
 dener concerning an unfruitful tree ; then, a proprietor, who 
 employs people for his vineyard ; or, a vintner, who fosters 
 and prunes his vines. At one time the Kingdom of Heaven 
 is a pearl, a treasure in the field ; then a marriage feast, a 
 fish-net, a wheat-field. Pardoning love, strict justice, the 
 friendly invitation to all, the righteousness and long suffer- 
 ing of God, the high worth of the imperishable treasure, the 
 necessity of bringing to God a pure heart, the mingling of 
 the noble and ignoble in this world, and the last irrevocable 
 separation these are all impressed in the deepest and 
 most lasting manner. This is instruction by observation. 
 We arc told that Socrates taught in like manner. Into the 
 midst of the turmoil of the market and the streets, into the 
 workshops of the artisans he went, teaching and questioning 
 his pupils who thirsted for knowledge (for which reason 
 his contemporaries reproached him with speaking always
 
 190 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 only of smiths, cobblers and tanners). To the simplest and 
 most concrete things, to the most personal events experi- 
 enced by his young friend, he joined the weightiest philo- 
 sophical inquiries. This is a hint as to the way in which we 
 can make use of the above stated principles. We can 
 secure to the child a rich supply of living apperception 
 helps if we not only refer to the home all that is strange 
 and remote, but especially make the unknown plain through 
 the known, and join all instruction in the strictest manner 
 to the personal experiences of the pupil. 
 
 This holds good for all branches of instruction, and for 
 even the driest subject. 'How far, for example, Goethe's 
 ballad of the Erlking, that story from the pagan antiquity 
 of our people, seems to lie from the comprehension of the 
 child ; and yet, apperceiving ideas for this poem can be 
 easily awakened. We have only to converse with the child 
 about the popular beliefs in river and water spirits to make 
 him tell of the old stories, so current with children, of the 
 water-maiden who bleaches her washing on the banks of the 
 stream, where the merman is who demands his yearly offer- 
 ing ; or of the Loreley, ensnaring the boatman by her song ; 
 to remind him, further, of certain illusions of the senses, 
 which he himself has experienced, when, in the darkness of 
 night, he mistook strips of clouds for ghosts, and forest 
 trees for dreadful monsters. All then becomes clear. 
 However unknown and strange the new idiom, say the 
 Latin, appears to the boy, many starting-points even for 
 this difficult demand can be found in his personal experience. 
 He already possesses the Latin for numerous known names 
 and terms without previously having been aware of it : for 
 example, Augustus, Sylvester, F"elix, Clara, Alma, album, 
 sexta, quinta, September, plus, minus, doctor, professor, 
 director, etc., which series may be greatly extended.
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 191 
 
 These foreign names being carried over into the mother- 
 tongue, this analytical Latin leads in the best way into the 
 vocabulary and etymology of the foreign language. If then, 
 later, he refers other English words, as altar, culture, fever, 
 regal, rival, to their original Latin form, he thus conquers, 
 as it were, a new world from his home foundation, and the 
 entrance into this new world must become much easier. 
 We shall not, however, as Ziller wished to do, work out this 
 analytical language material independently in advance. 
 "Would not that be to fall into the mistake of the current 
 home-science teaching, which in advance stores up for 
 instruction the analytical material of experience, and thus 
 " serves the spice by itself instead of with the food" ? It 
 seems much better to approach first the known forms of a 
 foreign language, as starting and connecting points for 
 similar forms. Geographical and historical instruction, as 
 already mentioned, will, for explanation and interpretation, 
 likewise make use of those ideas and concepts which were 
 acquired in the home. By this means the child ascends in 
 imagination to the highest Alpine summit, as he multiplies 
 the size of his home mountains, placing one on top of the 
 other. The ponds known to him he extends to great lakes 
 and seas, and, with the concepts of his native winter land- 
 scape, he journeys into the icy region of the North Pole. 
 With the church tower of his own place he measures the 
 pyramids of distant Egypt and the lofty cathedrals of 
 Christendom. About three times as high as the tower of 
 our principal church are the great Pyramids ; somewhat 
 higher still is the Strasburg Cathedral, St. Peter's Church at 
 Rome, and the cathedral of Cologne. Or, suppose the 
 children are to learn in history of the battle in the narrow 
 pass of Thermopylse. Then let us lead our little ones in 
 mind to a certain place in the Elster Valley, well known to
 
 192 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 them from their school excursions, where the way is suddenly 
 closed up, being contracted on one side by high, steep walls 
 of rock, on the other by the water, which seems to spread 
 out before us to the horizon. And now we say to them : 
 Thus must you form an idea of the pass of the warm springs ; 
 there behind a wall stood the hero band of Spartans, here 
 in the wide plain lay the barbarian army, and from the 
 mountain the traitor descended with the enemy into the 
 valley. And as we depict the battle of annihilation, and 
 those roaring sounds echoed by the walls of rock ; as we 
 relate the immortal deeds of the Lacedaemonians perhaps 
 our pupils may be pleased meanwhile to linger here with 
 their thoughts and to transfer to this place the din of 
 battle ; we will not disturb them in this if they only follow 
 our words understandingly. Or when the child in sacred 
 history, stimulated through the practical hint of the teacher 
 with reference to his own home circle of observation, paints 
 the biblical paradise in thought with the fresh colors of his 
 own garden or of one otherwise well known to him ; when 
 he transfers the Jordan with its holy place into his known 
 river valley ; when he conveys the Bethlehem shepherds on 
 Christmas night to the domestic plains, and, involuntarily, 
 during the narration of the teacher, glances up to the neigh- 
 boring hill as the mountain of the giving of the law, we 
 shall find nothing objectionable in such naive t subjective 
 comprehension, but will rather rejoice in it. For the child 
 brings then to the new ideas offered by instruction such 
 strong, living, helping notions as cannot be awakened more 
 strongly and permanently even by the most perfect repre- 
 sentation of the biblical places ; he apperceives in reality 
 what to another remains perhaps only empty words or 
 shadowy ideas. But the other experiences of the child also 
 present numerous apperception helps. Suppose, for ex-
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 193 
 
 ample, the distance of the sun from the earth is to be made 
 plain to him. The teacher in the spirit of our method asks, 
 " If now, up there in the sun one should shoot a cannon 
 ball straight at you, what would you do? " " Jump aside," 
 will be the answer. " But that is entirely unnecessary: yon 
 can lie peacefully asleep in your room, and get up again, 
 you can be confirmed, learn a business, and become as old 
 as I am then here comes the cannon ball. Now spring 
 aside ! Behold, so great is the distance from the sun to 
 us." How easy for the exotics among our flowers and trees 
 to transport us into remote lands, which are their home ! 
 A tree-shaped aloe trained in the windows of many a farmer's 
 room, or a pelargonium, serves beautifully as a starting 
 point for soaring over the Mediterranean Sea into the sand 
 wastes of Africa and the desert plateaus of the cape. The 
 principal divisions of the earth have among us agents and 
 consuls in every village common and in every garden. 
 South America sent fuchsias, maize, and, above all, pota- 
 toes ; Mexico, the dahlia and various cacti. And if the 
 child comes to know, further, that in Persia the walnut, the 
 peach, the horse-chestnut is at home ; that the cherry and 
 the hyacinth grow wild in Asia Minor ; the white lily in the 
 Promised Land ; that the grape-vine comes from the Cau- 
 casus ; the cucumber and kidney-bean from the hot East 
 Indies ; then these foreign lands remain to him no longer 
 mere empty names or geographical terms, but he wins from 
 them living, fresh-colored pictures. 
 
 When we at last pass over to the province of ethical and 
 religious ideas, the assertion is not surprising that right here 
 the demand upon the educator is especially difficult. Join 
 all instruction as much as possible to the experience of the 
 pupil. What the child brings to school with him of real 
 knowledge of nature and of linguistic readiness, can be
 
 194 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 gradually discovered ; but how will the teacher obtain definite 
 knowledge of the experiences relating to manners and cus- 
 toms, the moral and religious feelings of the pupil? The 
 heart of the child is in this respect almost inscrutable. And 
 yet, as in every other province, so also in this, an under- 
 standing cannot be attained without help of apperceiving 
 ideas. Many a biography of noted men attests that the 
 words of the teacher, in the hour for religious instruction, 
 often went over the heads of the children, since they found 
 in themselves no echo to the learned, abstract form; but 
 that the inattentive class at once gave attention and were all 
 eyes and ears if an anecdote, a story, an example from 
 every-day life and childish experience, interrupted like an 
 oasis the desert of abstract instruction. The domestic ex- 
 periences of the child, his intercourse with parents, brothers 
 and sisters, and playmates, his spiritual relation to God, 
 these are the ideas from which the teacher must principally 
 derive the starting points, or aids to apperception. There 
 occurs, for example, in a Bible story the word "gentle," and 
 he finds that all do not yet connect with this word a clear 
 idea. Shall he now give a comprehensive definition? No; 
 only from his own experience will it become clear to the 
 pupil what "gentle" is, as must all else which is to be in 
 reality his own spiritual possession. The teacher reminds 
 the pupil of a night when he suffered with a bad toothache 
 and his mother took him at last on her lap, and, rocking 
 and caressing him, comforted him thus: "Now it will be 
 better. In the morning it will be all over." This is a 
 moment when the child forgets the school, but he never for- 
 gets the moment. Or, if the teacher endeavors to awaken 
 the idea of sympathy, he will accomplish this in the surest 
 manner when he reminds the pupils of experiences of their 
 own and brings before their minds vividly those occasions
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 195 
 
 in which they rejoiced with the happy and wept with the 
 weeping. The more richly the domestic instruction is imbued 
 with such ethical experiences ; the more carefully the rise of 
 religious feelings and the observation of manners is promoted ; 
 the more deeply the event has stirred the soul, the better is 
 the understanding that the child brings to the so-called 
 moral instruction. Indeed not all children enjoy so excel- 
 lent an education, and only too often the experiences are 
 lacking on which this instruction must base its developing 
 activity. What must be done then? In this case it would 
 be the worst and most preposterous thing for the teacher to 
 attempt to supply the lacking ideas and feelings through 
 edifying lectures, well meant admonitions and urgent ad vice. 
 For virtue and religion must first be lived before they can 
 be taught and learned. Moral, religious, and aesthetic ideas 
 cannot be communicated through language and made intelli- 
 gible, unless their personal content, the moral and aesthetic 
 feelings, arise in the child himself. As little as one can 
 make clear to a blind person by means of words, what a 
 perception of a thing by light and color really implies, just 
 so little can one show or explain to one who is absolutely 
 without the fcner stirring of the moral feelings what such a 
 feeling is. The power of instruction to awaken moral and 
 religious feelings, through the calling forth of ideal forms, 
 to develop and strengthen the ethical judgment, rests 
 chiefly on this fact. But even here, instruction cannot do 
 everything. Who, for example, has never had the feeling 
 of repentance, which the cleverest kind of instruction 
 scarcely produces, and a desire to recover what has been 
 lost? Who has not in the midst of a devout congregation 
 felt the nearness of the omnipotent God, or been driven by 
 some severe experience to the avowal, fck Here God's finger 
 is visible ! " when religious instruction would scarcely
 
 196 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 have been able to provide the lacking feelings in proper 
 strength and depth ? The moral feelings then must chiefly 
 be lived, that is, must be evolved out of the practical rela- 
 tions of the child to life, before instruction can be referred 
 to them, or the child " learn virtue." Where these are 
 wanting, not instruction, but the surroundings must first 
 operate on the mind of the pupil. The example of the 
 teacher and of fellow-pupils, the intercourse with them 
 during instruction and after it, the entire school-life, should 
 show him in living reality those religious feelings and moral 
 ideas which were to him hitherto unknown ; the intercourse 
 with fellow-pupils in study and play, the praise and punish- 
 ment of the teacher, the daily school work and certain cere- 
 monious arrangements and holidays place him in positions 
 which easily become sources of moral convictions and religious 
 feelings. Finally, however, the rigid order of the school 
 and home, with their duties and unalterable customs and 
 usages, foster and develop those moral and religious germs 
 in the ways of conformity to custom. This is what Pesta- 
 lozzi meant when he declared, " Virtue and faith must first be, 
 and long continue to be a thing of the heart before they 
 can become a thing of the reason." The animated feeling 
 of every virtue must constantly precede the speaking of this 
 virtue. This is the only way in which the experiences 
 necessary to the province of ethical and religious interest 
 can be obtained by the child and apperceiving ideas be 
 provided. 
 
 We think, finally, of still another province of public 
 school instruction in which it is especially difficult always to 
 provide the requisite aids to apperception ; namely, the 
 particular branches of form instruction. Experience teaches 
 that the pupil brings originally to the material of instruction 
 in those branches only an indirect interest; and forms in-
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 197 
 
 terest him only on account of the things to which they belong ; 
 his lines of thought in mathematics and language have grown 
 together in the strictest manner with the real objects from 
 which they arise. For the former owes very much to the 
 latter ; intercourse with things not only secures to the ideas 
 lasting clearness and distinctness, since it repeats them 
 many times, but it leads also in the easiest manner to their 
 understanding. It teaches, in the simplest way, their appli- 
 cation. Every one possesses the greatest readiness of speech 
 in that subject with whose contents he is most familiar. 
 For the things which I know from the foundation up, over 
 which I have sufficiently grouped my thoughts, the necessary 
 forms of speech also stand at my disposal. Therefore the 
 old rule : Hold fast the thing, the words will follow of them- 
 selves. Why can excellent and favorable books much more 
 surely initiate into the secrets of a good style than a hun- 
 dred well established paragraphs from a book on style? 
 Because the content and form of speech stand in the closest 
 relation to each other, and the former cannot be given with- 
 out the latter. In the same manner the subject of space is 
 related to that of number. Here, also, is the strength and 
 activity of the form ideas of the child, the ease with which 
 they enter combinations essentially dependent upon the con- 
 crete observations which the child owes to the intercourse with 
 things. If, then, it holds good that the child, in the knowl- 
 edge of things, possesses valuable apperception ideas for 
 the material of form-instruction, the road is set forth in which 
 he can in the best manner acquire his established ideas 
 through the concrete : instruction in form, at least in the 
 public school, should not stand isolated, but should be joined 
 to instruction in things. In accordance with this principle, 
 ve do not proceed, in the instruction in the mother-tongue, 
 from language exercises which would be road slightly, and
 
 198 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 therefore remain misunderstood, or from heterogeneous ex- 
 ercises, standing in no real connection with the examples and 
 sentences, which can awaken no interest, but from a material 
 that has already value and importance for the pupil, from a 
 content that has been brought already to his understanding. 
 This is the ground and foundation by which the boy, through 
 comparison and the placing together of related forms, gradu- 
 ally and by his own activity derives from many individual 
 language forms the grammatical principles by which, in the 
 course of time, he works out for himself his grammar. 
 While we give him further occasion to set forth regularly, 
 in a simple and clear manner, oral and written, something 
 that he has learned in the line of other instruction, we form 
 his style in a far surer manner than when we, as too often 
 happens, cause him, through selected exercises standing in 
 no relation to the rest of instruction, to write about things 
 for which he has no heart or no thought. 
 
 We proceed in arithmetic constantly, not only from denom- 
 inate numbers, that is, from number ideas which are joined 
 with ideas of things, because they are more intelligible and 
 tangible than pure numbers, but even in this branch of instruc- 
 tion we remain in the closest relation with things as they are 
 presented by the rest of instruction and by life. Meanwhile 
 we work out these concrete notions carefully with regard to 
 the required number ideas, drill the pupil in readiness of 
 calculation, and bring him back constantly upon them, pro- 
 vided any obscurity and uncertainty shows itself. Finally, 
 in regard to form teaching, concrete things here also form 
 the starting-point of instruction. The child learns to recog- 
 nize the simplest typical forms of bodies in the prominent ob- 
 jects of his environment ; for example, in monuments, build- 
 ings, columns, etc. Before there is language of figures in 
 the abstract, these forms must be comprehended from things.
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 199 
 
 Not before numerous triangles have been pointed out, 
 measured, valued, and compared, should any general propo- 
 sition of the triangle be given. Instruction must refer 
 regularly to things, if the acquired geometrical principles are 
 to find their application in practical life. For example, the 
 pupil is drilled often in measuring and estimating the surface 
 contents of court and garden in the calculation of the solid 
 contents of the objects of his surroundings. In this manner 
 a stream of apperceiving ideas will be conducted over from 
 the province of things to that of form, and will constantly 
 fill the abstract ideas of form with living content, making 
 them grow together in the most intimate way with other 
 lines of thought, protecting them from a shadowy past life 
 and from an early oblivion after the school life is over. 
 
 We are at the end of our answer to the question, what can the 
 teacher do for the subject of apperception ? How can he pro- 
 vide for his instruction sufficient apperceiving ideas in the con- 
 sciousness of the pupil? We found that it was his duty to gain 
 a definite view into the pupil's range of thought, especially 
 in the extremely important experience that they have 
 acquired previous to all instruction, to brighten and deepen 
 this and to enlarge it through suitable home instruction. 
 We emphasized further that he must, in the most careful 
 manner, join all his instruction to the acquired experience of 
 the pupils in many ways, especially through advancing in- 
 struction. 
 
 It remains yet to direct our attention to the connection of 
 the subject and the object of apperception. Indeed, as this 
 lies in the nature of the subject under consideration, we 
 have already touched this province many times in the course 
 of the inquiry ; bift we could only in a very general manner 
 mention the ways and means which bring about the con- 
 nection. Now, however, it is our purpose to indicate the
 
 200 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 special, systematic arrangements through which, in every 
 particular case, a sure and intimate blending of the two 
 factors is brought about, and to establish through the par- 
 ticular divisions into which the subject-matter of a branch 
 must be analyzed, the steps of instruction that are neces- 
 sary, provided a thorough and complete union of these factors 
 is to come to pass. 
 
 3. "THE PROPER UNION OF THE FACTORS OF APPERCEPTION 
 
 IN LEARNING. 
 ( Tlie Process of Teaching.) 
 
 It has been already emphasized that the process of apper- 
 ception does not by any means properly develop itself in the 
 child ; experience teaches rather that even under the most 
 favorable circumstances when the child is offered the material 
 of instruction for which it already possesses numerous ap- 
 perceiving ideas, the connection of the old with the new not 
 infrequently fails to be made. This is the case, if the con- 
 sciousness of the pupil during instruction is either filled with 
 foreign thoughts and feelings which do not permit the apper- 
 ception helps to arise ; or if the latter lack the requisite 
 strength and clearness, the necessary order and completeness, 
 and therefore power, to grasp apperceivingly the ideas 
 called forth by instruction. Hence it does not suffice that 
 the learner possesses apperception aids for the new; they 
 must also be at his disposal with the greatest clearness at 
 the right time and place. They must, likewise, in the 
 moment of learning, stand at the threshold of consciousness 
 to present to the new elements all that are related, and so to 
 grasp the new knowledge as to prepare for it the right mood 
 and the correct understanding. We conclude, however, that 
 the presentation of the new should not be the first thing in 
 instruction, that as a rule a stage of preparation must precede.
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 201 
 
 Fine tact forbids one to present, pell-mell, weighty and unex- 
 pected communications. The orator regards it as necessary, 
 even with an adult audience, to preface his lecture with an 
 introduction recalling known facts. Further, before reading a 
 new book or scientific article, one calls forth his own experi- 
 ences and thoughts concerning the matter, asking himself what 
 the author indeed has to say, as the best means for an indepen- 
 dent, intelligent connection of the new ideas. Every one 
 knows that a merely mechanical memoriter connection of 
 what is read can best be prevented by providing such a col- 
 lection of his own ideas, even if they should be partly or 
 entirely erroneous. Moreover, to important expected events 
 that affect our individuality in an especial manner, the cir- 
 cumspect man opposes conceptions referring to the nature 
 and consequences of such events so that they do not surprise 
 him to his hurt. What is thus to the adult a condition for 
 the independent reception of new knowledge and important 
 experiences, is to the pupil a necessity. In a still higher 
 degree than the man, the child requires time to collect and 
 expand his apperceiving ideas. "Preparation is every- 
 thing," holds good nowhere more than with him. In this 
 preparation, however, the problem has to do with searching 
 out, in the pupil's own range of experience, the old and 
 known which is included in the new material of instruction 
 and so working it over that it can enter into an inner con- 
 nection with what is similar in the subject. Tt will be neces- 
 nary to obviate in advance certain checkings of a quick flow 
 of thought, to utilize all the ideas of the pupil which stand 
 in relation to the new, and to explain and throw light upon 
 them in order to bring about their reproduction and to raise 
 them to a higher degree of clearness. For this purpose we 
 must not content ourselves, indeed, with recalling particular 
 facts that the child knows, with pointing towards this or
 
 202 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 that which the instruction has already treated, without going 
 deeper into the store of the learner's ideas. Just as little 
 must we seek this preparation in a mere repetition of the 
 preceding lessons, however necessary for our purpose such 
 a repetition prove itself to be. We must rather de- 
 vote to the apperceiving ideas a thorough consideration, 
 a thorough examination which spares neither trouble nor 
 time. We will not only allow the pupil to reproduce 
 even the familiar domestic events of his life, which the 
 school often thinks it must above all ignore, but we must 
 more regularly cause him to express himself in a free, unre- 
 strained manner about the subjects of his experience, not 
 avoiding even the most peculiar related events, in order that 
 a complete absorption in familiar ideas, those strongest aids 
 to apperception, shall precede the presentation of the related 
 new ideas. The pupil must first become at home again in 
 definite old groups of thought ; he must pass through these 
 old groups with a certain warmth and ease, before we offer 
 him the new ; he must feel firm ground under his feet for 
 the new mental operations that instruction exacts from 
 him. If the preparatory conversation makes it apparent 
 that the existing apperceiving ideas are too weak and un- 
 satisfactory, it becomes necessary for the preparation to 
 provide what is lacking. Often enough, therefore, we 
 must first of all search out and traverse the old ways in 
 which the ideas arose, in order that the experiences and ob- 
 servations may be repeated, and the ideas improved or 
 strengthened. New ways also must often be open to ex- 
 perience and observation. School excursions, therefore, at 
 this stage are suitable to those efforts, by which false, weak 
 or incomplete aids to apperception receive their correction, 
 clearness and completeness. From indefinite speaking, from 
 a vague roaming around in the field of the child's experi-
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 203 
 
 ences, we are prevented and protected in advance by the 
 definite aim which, during the preparation, both teacher and 
 pupil always have in view. For from the beginning the 
 pupil also must know the problem which the recitation hour 
 has next to solve ; he must know why we call back this or 
 that known fact into his consciousness. Only when he 
 knows the purpose of the exercise, do apperceiving ideas 
 flow in rich fulness, and especially do those deepest ideas 
 arise which the teacher would otherwise never understand 
 how to value or to call forth ; only then do the facts brought 
 by the discussion receive for the pupil that inner dependence 
 and elasticity which is indispensable to the reception of the 
 new ; only then can that expectation be excited in him 
 which hastens on in advance into the province of the new 
 material of instruction and prepares for it a quick and certain 
 adoption ; only then can he attempt, in the stage of prepara- 
 tion, by his own reflection, to seize in whole or part the object 
 of instruction. The apperceiving ideas acquired in this and 
 similar ways will frequently be collected and arranged. If 
 we should pass over the material but once, and in the order 
 in which it would occur by chance, many contradictions 
 would remain unreconciled, and many principal thoughts not 
 seldom be lost in a mass of incidentals. A brief summing 
 up, suitable to the content of the ideas, and a separation of the 
 essential from the unessential, is therefore absolutely neces- 
 sary ; and not less so, a sufficient repetition and impressing 
 of that which, as yet, shows itself uncertain and wavering. 
 When this is neglected, we stop half way, and apperception, 
 in spite of the preparation, cannot be accomplished with the 
 requisite ease. 
 
 The demand is also natural and justifiable that the ground 
 for the new lesson be prepared in ad vance ; yet opposed to 
 this general truth there are manifold considerations and
 
 204 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 objections. Iii the first place, a teacher may think he can 
 cause the new to be assimilated even without a special pre- 
 paratory step, and so in the presentation of the new matter 
 reproduce the experiences of the pupil piecemeal, and intro- 
 duce, or possibly seek to create, the requisite apperception 
 aids by a subsequent explanation of what is offered. It may 
 be also that the treatment of the series of ideas called up 
 for apperception will proceed too rapidly and too super- 
 ficially, without attaining the intended effect, or, if continued, 
 will delay or check the pupil's movement of thought already 
 directed toward the comprehension of the new, a state of 
 things which little favors apperception. An historical lec- 
 ture, which ventured to take nothing for granted and 
 laboriously made all the explanations necessary for complete 
 understanding, would be most unprofitable, and would leave 
 behind about the same painful and tedious impression on 
 the pupil that a poem furnished with innumerable marginal 
 notes, or a text grown over with learned remarks, makes on 
 adult readers. For as often as the lecturer interrupts the 
 course of the narrative, to procure the necessary apper- 
 ception aids, so often also will the strained expectation of 
 the listener be diverted, and the main subject pressing 
 rapidly forward will arrest the spiritual assimilation, and a 
 lasting impression of violent delay in his current of ideas 
 will overcome the pupil. It would be well, then, if the 
 apperceiving ideas were provided by means of a thorough 
 preparation that would complete and deepen the understand- 
 ing of what is presented. Moreover, if the child has a 
 previous comprehension, incomplete though it may be, he 
 will have a basis in apperceiviug ideas such that a gradual 
 assimilation of the subject can take place. Where, on the 
 other hand, such apperception aids are wanting, the new 
 quickly sinks below the threshold of consciousness or is
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 205 
 
 wrongly perceived. And then it is only with great difficulty 
 that an explanation can restore the ideas for assimilation, or 
 entirely annul the disadvantages accruing from a false, 
 incomplete comprehension ; it will always remain a difficult 
 and thankless task to make good again that which an 
 insufficient apperception has spoiled, and to eradicate mis- 
 takes already fixed. Some have disputed the possibility of 
 being able to place a limit in advance to each lesson, fearing 
 that the logical carrying out of our demand will lead to 
 artificial divisions, wholly indifferent to the child. Besides, 
 they say, the general truth, the final theme, which seeks, for 
 example, to develop a catechism or book of proverbs, could 
 not possibly be announced to the child in advance. Cer- 
 tainly, the proper determination of the aim is not easily 
 made in all subjects, as, for example, in natural science and 
 in form instruction, where interesting practical questions in 
 the life of nature and men, form the natural starting and 
 terminal points of instruction. And it may be admitted that 
 many of the tests hitherto published referring to the aim, for 
 example, in biblical stories have not been correct. This 
 merely signifies, however, that in the selection of the aim of 
 the lesson, special care must be taken to avoid certain mis- 
 takes and misapprehensions. With this precaution, the 
 announcement of a purpose in the whole plan has constantly 
 proved itself not only possible, but also useful and neces- 
 sary. We have always found that for every lesson-whole, 
 a question or exercise or fact of experience could be produced, 
 which announces the new in such a way that it no longer 
 touches the pupil's ear as completely strange, but calls suffi- 
 cient apperception helps into consciousness. But this an- 
 nouncement must never be permitted to take the form of a 
 general idea or a general opinion ; for it is clear that the 
 abstract cannot be given, that it is rather to be gradually
 
 206 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 developed from a group of similar ideas. Were we to givr the 
 pupil a principle in advance, as the recognized end to be 
 attained, then almost all connecting points for this, and con- 
 sequently for every basis of apperceiving activity, would be 
 lacking. Therefore it has always been regarded as obvious, 
 that only a concrete object is to be presented to the pupil, an 
 object lying near to his previous experience and exciting lively 
 expectation, an object or aim existing, actually in the 
 absorption of new and interesting ideas. But where can 
 such interesting ideas be found? Must not much be ac- 
 quired for which in itself the child, at the time, feels no 
 interest? Certainly, but if the child is indifferent concern- 
 ing certain subjects of instruction, because he thinks he 
 knows these well enough already, or because he undervalues 
 their importance in human knowledge and business, an 
 interest can be awakened, and he can, through the method 
 of Socrates, by suitable questions be made aware that he 
 really knows very little of the things referred to, that the 
 cause of certain phenomena remains concealed ; also that he 
 has, without reason, held certain things as self-evident and 
 uninteresting. For the child, facts must be converted into 
 problems. That which in and of itself excites no interest 
 must be used as a means of serving an interesting purpose. 
 Jf the child, for example, is not especially interested in the 
 consideration of dry forms of speech, who can blame him? 
 And yet interest in such forms can immediately be acquired 
 if we put them into connection with practical needs. This 
 is shown in reading, and in the oral and written expression 
 of thought. The child will use grammatical forms with 
 eagerness, not for their own sake, bat for the sake of being 
 able to read well and with understanding, and for the sake 
 of being able to express his ideas properly and exactly. 
 By such methods, in subjects apparently the driest, an inter-
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 207 
 
 est can be secured that will lend to the apperceiving ideas 
 the proper strength and vividness. Some have pointed out 
 that in the work of preparation there is a temptation to dwell 
 too long upon various incidental things, and that the teacher 
 of little skill enters into these at length, coming tardily to 
 the real matter in hand. The inference has been drawn 
 from this that with beginners and unskilled teachers it is 
 better to omit the preparation altogether. In fact, a prepar- 
 ation which is merely mechanical or which introduces too 
 many details, conceals those defects and with them the 
 danger of putting fatal weariness in place of childlike inter- 
 est. It escapes this danger, however, when the aim is so 
 clearly, personally and concretely seized that a rambling 
 into the indefinite is impossible ; when we call up to the 
 mind of the pupil only so much of the known as the under- 
 standing of the new absolutely demands ; when we do not 
 rely on the accidental, but above all seek to place the pupil 
 in the right situation and disposition. Limitation here also 
 marks the master. But is the beginner, because he is not 
 yet a master, never to try his skill in self-limitation, even if 
 exposed here and there to the danger of making mistakes ? 
 
 Have not different pupils different ranges of thought, so 
 that one reproduces apperceptive notions where another ob- 
 tains none? And is not attention different in spite of the 
 good intent of the pupil ? Can it therefore be asserted with cer- 
 tainty that the new material of instruction has been sufficiently 
 prepared? And if not, what advantage has the new method 
 over old ones? We may reply that the discerning, con- 
 scientious teacher, to whom every soul intrusted to him 
 is a care, by means of solicitous observation of the individual 
 pupils, during instruction and during recreation, by means 
 of familiar intercourse with them on the play-ground or on 
 excursions, by means of heartiest sympathy in the events of
 
 208 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 peculiar interest to them, would certainly be able to under- 
 stand a large part of the child's world of thought, and know 
 how to individualize a great deal in his instruction. He 
 would be able to lay hold in the most practical way upon the 
 child's most active thoughts and inclinations. Moreover in 
 the events of the preceding lessons and in school excursions 
 there is produced a very rich and valuable treasure of apper- 
 ceptive ideas, increasing with every hour, which are common 
 to all the pupils, because they are acquired by common labor. 
 And even supposing that varied apperceptive helps in acquir- 
 ing the new knowledge by different pupils of the same class 
 are offered, what difference does it make ? If only the mental 
 appropriation is most thoroughly accomplished by the pupil 
 in his own way it matters not by what means it is done. 
 But whatever is especially calculated to fix the ideas, to 
 assimilate with knowledge already possessed, to bring what 
 already exists in the mind into harmony with the new material 
 before the mind, to awaken apperceptive notions, will be 
 ratified a thousand fold by -experience. Whenever the 
 lesson starts with something interesting that attracts the 
 attention of the pupils from the outset, the necessary ap- 
 perceptive helps will seldom be lacking, far more seldom at 
 least than when the unknown is brought forward unex- 
 pectedly and without aids ' to apperception. The prepara- 
 tory discussion will experience an essential limitation and 
 abridgement in such cases where the work upon the immedi- 
 ately preceding lesson has aroused in the pupil, inquiry, 
 expectation, reflection and doubt which are to find their 
 solution, explanation and fulfillment in the new material 
 
 'No one will assert that the preparatory discussion will reach its pur- 
 pose with all the children of a class. But if there be but little that is not 
 understood, and that by only a few, it must be accepted and applied as 
 an important aid in method.
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 209 
 
 offered. In such cases there is already found in the fore- 
 ground of the child's consciousness a related range of thought, 
 and therefore sufficient helps to apperception are easily 
 brought forward by means of proper questions. The pre- 
 ceding applies especially to the advanced classes. The 
 more advanced the pupil, the shorter the preparatory analyt- 
 ical discussion by the teacher, the more it may be left to 
 the pupil to find the right means of acquiring the new for 
 himself. It is the purpose of every methodically prepared 
 lesson gradually to raise the pupil to such mental indepen- 
 dence, and finally make the " analysis " by the teacher 
 superfluous. 
 
 The Herbart School, especially Ziller, has emphasized, 
 with no uncertain sound, the necessity of a preparatory 
 step (the so-called "analysis") for the lesson, and they 
 have given it a psychological basis. We meet indeed oc- 
 casional pedagogues outside of this school who make similar 
 requirements in teaching the lesson. Wangemann, for ex- 
 ample (Handreichung beim ersten Unterricht der Kleinen 
 in der GotteserJcenntniss) , begins every biblical story with a 
 "preparation," of which he gives the following as advan- 
 tages gained : " It must enable the child upon hearing the 
 biblical story the first time to comprehend at least the im- 
 portant matters perfectly. It will prevent the engendering 
 and fixing of all sorts of preposterous and remarkable ideas 
 in the mind which comes from listening to incomprehensible 
 expressions. The preparation must do decidedly more than 
 seek to awaken a right frame of mind. It must seek out 
 the conditions and relations of life, relations that the story 
 under consideration introduces, and endeavor to bring them 
 into the world in which the child lives, hold them up to his 
 view, call particular attention to them, and elucidate them, in 
 order to prepare the understanding for what the story reveals 
 later."
 
 210 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 Curtinann recommends a like procedure in his treatment of 
 the Reading Book (Jjfhrbnch der Erziehmuj mid ties l'nt>-,- 
 //<// f.s), in which he would have every selection that is not 
 easily understood preceded by an explanatory introduction. 
 He says, "Before the child begins to read, it must know 
 what it is going to read about. The pupil must read with 
 attention and with interest which the teacher has excited be- 
 fore the reading begins. The difficulties also, which would 
 interfere with the interest, must be removed beforehand. 
 Everything most necessary to a good understanding of the 
 subject should be explained at the outset, and not at the 
 end when the best impressions are effaced. The teacher 
 must connect every new reading lesson with the sense per- 
 ceptions already obtained or with what has already been 
 read, and thereby make it comprehensible." 
 
 It has been repeatedly attempted, especially recently, to 
 reform and improve the old-fashioned common practice ac- 
 cording to these ideas. But there are nevertheless but com- 
 paratively few persons who place themselves definitely and 
 logically in favor of preparing the pupils for each new lesson, 
 and even they with their criticisms challenge the manner of 
 carrying out such preparation. It seems most extraordinary 
 that there shall be a procedure in instruction, that owes 
 its warrant to general psychological laws and that studies 
 the need of each pupil narrowed to a single branch, or 
 to a definite part of a branch (e. g. & piece of poetry), 
 that it is considered necessary to prepare the pupil for ap- 
 perceptive notions in biblical history or in a reading lesson, 
 while in other subjects of instruction such preparation may 
 be omitted. We are liable to forget that the appercep- 
 tive process remains the same everywhere, and in no field of 
 knowledge can anything new be appropriated unless there are 
 found in the mind of the child well grounded, related thoughts.
 
 -ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 211 
 
 In most cases the preparatory discussion should not make 
 reference to the ultimate purpose of the lesson ; this will be 
 indicated either at the end of the preparation or not at all, 
 because it is better to lead the child unconsciously to the end 
 sought, and to prepare it for a kind of surprise. By men- 
 tioning the end sought beforehand, the will of the learner 
 will be but little helped, and the development of the most 
 interesting experiences of the child will be lost. This seems 
 to be beyond dispute. Many believe that they are prepar- 
 ing for the presentation of the new while they are giving the 
 new itself in the preparatory discussion. They seek, for 
 example, to make the mastery of an epic poem easy by a 
 simple description, while they present the thought of the 
 poem beforehand. They precede the presentation of a 
 biblical story according to the wording of the biblical text 
 by most childish " preparatory narration," which is supposed 
 to remove the difficulties of Luther's translation. Or they 
 bring forward in the preparatory elucidation certain concepts, 
 facts and examples which are suggested in the material of 
 instruction, when it is doubtful whether they come at all 
 within the limits of the individual experiences of the child. 
 They usher in the new by means of "introductions," which 
 perhaps in certain objective respects are proper, but from a 
 pedagogical standpoint must be regarded as entirely impracti- 
 cable and mistaken. For their content is not formed by old, 
 familiar ideas of the pupil, which only need to be excited in 
 order to return clear and living into consciousness, but new, 
 unknown ones, with which the mind must struggle if it 
 masters them. 
 
 But it does not need to be mentioned that ideas which 
 need the help of apperception themselves in order to become 
 fixed, ideas which, because of momentary restraint, fall into 
 lasting obscurity, are not suited to work out a strong, apper-
 
 212 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 ceptive power. It is iiot learned introductions and eloquent 
 recitals of new, unknown experiences that smooth the way 
 to the comprehension of the new easily and surely, but the 
 help must spring from the soul of the pupil, from his strong- 
 est and most vivid range of ideas, if an assimilation is ever 
 to be reached. Therefore, from first to last, that form of 
 preparation in which the teacher alone takes part, which 
 subjects the pupil to discourses by the teacher and which 
 the pupil must silently follow, must be declared inadmissible. 
 For it is not the teacher but the learner that must do the 
 principal work ; to the former belongs the duty of bringing 
 forward the most important apperceptive helps. But a 
 simple examining and questioning, that merely bring out a 
 part of the treasures of the child's knowledge, hindering his 
 thought activity, will by no means answer our purpose. 
 
 The apperceptive ideas of the pupil are brought out the 
 best and easiest if he is led by means of questions to express 
 his own knowledge freely and unhindered. This he will do 
 in a connected way if the preparatory discussion takes the 
 form of a familiar conversation. Then the dullest mind has 
 time to act, and even the retiring disposition is encouraged 
 by the confidential tone of conversation. No one should be 
 omitted in the relation of his experience, and each, according 
 to the measure of his knowledge, will add something to the 
 new thought-structure. Every one rejoices that his own 
 knowledge, which has heretofore been smuggled in as for- 
 bidden ware as compared with the word of the teacher, is 
 recognized and respected, and each looks forward to every 
 new lesson with redoubled interest. This condition of mind 
 is the most favorable that the new material can meet ; the ap- 
 perceptive process is introduced in the very best way possible. 
 
 The instruction must now pass to the second step, the 
 presentation of the new material. This consists in either
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 213 
 
 relating a story (to small children) , reading a selection or his- 
 torical topic (to riper pupils), or in showing and carefully 
 observing a natural object, a geometrical body, an exercise 
 in arithmetic for the solution of a problem, a geographical 
 subject exhibited upon the board or sought upon a map and 
 described, an incident in natural science brought up and in- 
 vestigated. It is important so to adapt and apply the object 
 to be apperceived that all of its parts which linger on the 
 threshold of consciousness may easily and surely unite with 
 the ideas the child already possesses. It is clear that even 
 well prepared matter cannot be thoroughly mastered if the 
 ideas are forced too rapidly upon the consciousness of the 
 learuer, or if they are too weakly and obscurely presented. 
 The pupil will not become master of the material if he is 
 overwhelmed with too much at once, if the teacher fails to 
 linger upon difficult points with necessary stress, if the mate- 
 rial is not presented in proper order and with proper clear- 
 ness, and if the attention is not held. The more time 
 given to the individual members or parts of the object to be 
 studied in order that it may unfold clearly and intelligently 
 in the consciousness of the children, the more opportunity the 
 pupil has to appropriate the presented notions that are to 
 be apperceived, the better will they be apperceived and the 
 better learned. It follows therefore that the amount of ma- 
 terial given must be measured by the capacity of the pupil, so 
 that neither too much nor too little may be asked of him; 
 such material must be properly connected in order that he 
 shall not receive it as a mass, but rather that it may be fixed 
 in his mind according to the law of successive clearness, 
 from section to section, from item to item. Thus are made the 
 necessary pauses which give opportunity for a review of the 
 ground covered and which allow a moment of reflection to fol- 
 low regularly a state of deep absorption in the subject. Let
 
 214 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 short, topical statements and key-words be placed on the 
 blackboard, which indicate the particular points on which at- 
 tention must be fixed, and which assist in retaining the idea. 
 Finally, the separate parts, each of which has been made 
 prominent for the sake of clearness, must be united and 
 combined into a unity in consciousness. 
 
 " The change from absorption to reflection must take place 
 exactly as inhalation follows exhalation in physical life ; it 
 is the process of mental respiration." Nowhere has our 
 claim a greater justification than in the beginning of a science, 
 or in elementary instruction. It is everywhere recognized, 
 and indeed it has become a proverb, that in every depart- 
 ment of human knowledge, the beginning is the most difficult. 
 It is true that there are but few ideas in the child's mind with 
 which the new material can readily assimilate ; therefore it 
 needs plenty of time for the fusion of the two groups of 
 ideas to take place, and because of this the assimilation of 
 the new and unknown is at first so uncertain and doubtful. 
 If one should hasten from . absorption to absorption^ or 
 should at the stage where the child learns most slowly, in 
 order to gain time, make too rapid progress, or perhaps, be- 
 cause the subject is interesting, seek to give the greatest 
 amount of material at one time, an important factor would 
 be lacking in the process of mental respiration. The princi- 
 pal pillars of the structure of thought now forming would be 
 undermined and only superficial knowledge would be the 
 result. 
 
 Next to the proper arrangement of every subject to be 
 taught, there is still another means most appropriate to assist 
 in a thorough fusion of the new with the present store of ideas ; 
 let the pupil as often as possible strive to arrive at the wished- 
 for knowledge in his own, self-chosen way. Let him attempt 
 to solve the arithmetical exercise or the problem in natural
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 215 
 
 science, or to explain an extraordinary phenomenon in his own 
 way ; let him reflect upon the voiceless symbols of the geo- 
 graphical map ; let him by means of careful observation and 
 independent description appropriate to himself that which 
 the teacher's instruction would otherwise give him. Let 
 him observe for himself without outside help, how the con- 
 nection of historical facts, the causes and effects of certain 
 events, the motives and characters of the chief persons in- 
 volved are to be understood. The main purpose should be 
 separated into subordinate purposes, thereby making it 
 possible for the pupil to find out and conclude a great deal 
 for himself, which otherwise must be told or shown him. 1 
 
 Of course he will not always choose the best and directest 
 way, but certainly it will be the easiest way for him, that 
 is, the one in which he finds the greatest number of 
 apperceptive helps. His course of thought will need in 
 many points to be extended and corrected ; but it has the 
 advantage that nothing unknown to him has been brought 
 in, nothing that he does not possess, and it takes root in his 
 store of ideas, and can easily be examined by him from 
 every point of view. Even if the pupil is able to appro- 
 priate the new matter only imperfectly, his work is not to be 
 considered as wholly lost. "He has at least obtained a 
 glance at the material by means of this preliminary attempt 
 at free presentation, which, when he has a more correct 
 method, acts as a help to the memory." Many doubts are 
 resolved, many hindrances removed, and so many related 
 ideas are awakened, that the new facts find already in the 
 
 1 " Neither discoveries nor inventions are made in the school ; neither 
 are discoveries or inventions brought to maturity there, but the pupils 
 should be so trained as to discover whaj has already been discovered, 
 to investigate what has been investigated, to seek for what has been 
 found.' ' LAZARUS.
 
 216 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 mind plenty of material with which to connect. But the 
 teacher must guard against unnecessarily narrowing the 
 thought-activities of the pupil, and should bring him for- 
 ward by means of " suggestive questions " (Scheinfragen) 
 which indeed may be rich in content, and treat of the most 
 important and essential things, but which the child should 
 find out for himself. The teacher will seek to lead him 
 preferably by questions which give sufficient play to his re- 
 flection, as for example : What must now take place? What 
 is the next step? What is still lacking? " Material help will 
 be given only when the suggestive questions do not suffice ; but 
 when used they must be so comprehensible, definite and 
 forceful that the transition takes place without anticipating 
 those things that the pupil can grasp of himself, and they 
 must be helps to the pupil just where he is helpless." 
 
 But while we exercise so much care that the pupil shall 
 reach, the end sought by self-chosen means, if we bow before 
 superficial adaptation, whereby the new material is simply 
 committed to memory without comprehending, we retard 
 (not necessarily make more difficult) the process of apper- 
 ception for the purpose of gaining time and adding the great- 
 est possible number of new notions at the expense of per- 
 fect mastery and complete assimilation on the part of the 
 pupil. For we possess nothing surer and more lasting, 
 nothing that is able to incite the volition, like that which we 
 have found out for ourselves by our own powers, and have 
 worked out alone. 1 
 
 1 We must criticise the following assertion by Palmer : " It is a mis- 
 taken idea that the child receives more good or is surer of a thing if he 
 haa found out the truth for himself, than if it has been given him in a 
 thorough manner by the teacher." On the contrary, Schiller says (liber 
 die notwendigen Grenzen beim Oebrauch schoner Formen): "There is no 
 way for the results of thinking to reach the will and the inner life of the 
 child except through self-activity. Nothing but that which has already 
 become a living deed within us, can become such in the outer world."
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 217 
 
 We have indicated above that one of the objects of prep- 
 aration is to excite expectation in the pupil, which will be a 
 help in leading him to the mastery of the lesson for himself. 
 The new lesson will not always meet such expectations ; 
 it will in many points undoubtedly be antagonistic to 
 the apperceptive notions of the child. It would be easy in 
 such cases to confirm a fickle and therefore wrong appercep- 
 tion. When the parts of the new material that contradict 
 one another are made too little prominent, and those ele- 
 ments that are related and resemble each other are brought 
 forward too rapidly in effecting a union, the antithesis will 
 be eclipsed and will not find a place in consciousness. Then 
 the learner overlooks the peculiar characteristics of the les- 
 son, and his conception is subjective and false, or at least 
 incomplete. This danger is sometimes all the greater, 
 the more thorough the preparatory discussion has been, the 
 more one attempts to come down to the familiar, individual 
 range of thought belonging to the pupil, and to find ideas 
 already in the mind with which the new ones will harmonize. 
 But this danger may be avoided if in the presentation of the 
 lesson the antitheses are brought out sharply and definitely, 
 if the teacher lingers longer and with particular emphasis 
 upon them, and if the pupil's attention is especially called 
 to them. It is proper also to delay the combination of the 
 elements of the related ideas until the antithetical ones have 
 fully come into consciousness and have become an insepar- 
 able part of the assimilation ; it is also important to delay 
 the progress of apperception in a measure, in order that 
 it may be the more thorough and objective. Accordingly, 
 the historical story, for- example, will produce the deeper and 
 more correct comprehension of historical persons and events, 
 the better the present is transposed into past times and past 
 civilizations, and the better the story pictures to the mind of
 
 218 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 the child the prominent peculiarities of an historical people or 
 race, as they asserted themselves to the world in language, 
 literature, customs, and manner of living. The study of 
 historical authors is recommended to maturer youth for the 
 same reason ; for no manual of instruction can show the 
 antithesis between our modern culture and that of the past 
 like the work of an old chronicler, who faithfully pictures the 
 events and deeds, the views of life, the thoughts, the 
 feelings, the customs, and the language of his time. 
 
 Greatest care must be exercised in natural science iq- 
 struction, in the investigation and experiments concerning 
 those phenomena which in every-day life are surrounded by 
 false and baseless notions, take, for example, the precepts 
 that our peasants follow, the fairy tales of our nurses concern- 
 ing certain animals, etc. The child, of course, brings these 
 notions with him when he enters school. The same caution 
 is needed in religious instruction with reference to super- 
 stitious notions, customs and practices, which are handed 
 down from generation to generation. 
 
 The presentation of the new material closes with a recap- 
 itulation and review of the whole by the pupil. He should 
 now show by a systematic reproduction of the lesson pre- 
 sented that he has fully understood the subject. "The 
 best test that a person has understood a thing is, that 
 he can reproduce it in his own way, with his own 
 words" (Herder). So, then, if the separate parts of the 
 new are more closely united by many repetitions, the entirety 
 will be the more strongly impressed upon the mind. To 
 every lesson which offers something new, belongs the mis- 
 sion of making a definite, well-defined series of ideas the 
 inalienable property of the child. But the formation of such 
 a fixed series of ideas would be furthered but little if the 
 repetition and combination of the material learned should
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 219 
 
 proceed in the form of repeated questioning and analyz- 
 ing of such material, ?'. e., if the pupil is not required 
 to give the whole matter at once, but is allowed to give 
 it piecemeal. Then, under the most favorable circumstan- 
 ces, " the parts in his hand, he may hold and class, but the 
 spiritual link is, alas, lost." Then apperception would, to 
 all outward appearance, never reach perfection. We always 
 require, therefore, a complete, free narration, an independent, 
 connected presentation of what is learned. We allow the 
 pupil to speak freely and without hindrance, without inter- 
 rupting his course of thought by questions or suggestions. 
 As a rule, we do not interfere even when he mixes in error 
 or forgets important things ; but after the conclusion, of his 
 presentation, we ask the whole class to rectify errors, supply 
 deficiencies and correct an incomplete rendering. Further, 
 we must avoid forcing the pupils to comprehend or grasp 
 the whole by means of prepared forms of expression that are 
 not clear to them. For example, we do not require the con- 
 tent of a biblical story to be given strictly in the words of 
 the sacred writer, if the child does not choose those forms of 
 expression of his own accord. For by reason of the inti- 
 mate connection between word and thought, between condi- 
 tion of mind and language, which do not correspond to his 
 individual thought relations, he would have to give up a 
 large part of his apperceptions, and accept expressions 
 which are nothing more than empty words to him. It 
 is far more important that the child should express him- 
 self in his own words, in the common, familiar language 
 of the people, of course free from dialect, rather than in 
 unfamiliar book-language ; the former is far more closely 
 related to his apperceptions. We even permit certain pecu- 
 liarities of childish expression, if they are not ungrammatical, 
 and in the case of serious mistakes allow only a brief, explicit
 
 220 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 correction to be made. For a smooth, connected presentation 
 of the child's own thought has, in our eyes, an incomparably 
 greater value than a discourse interrupted and corrected a 
 hundred times ^by the teacher, in which there is no longer 
 anything original or characteristic of the child, but a few 
 pretty fonns of speech that the child has committed to 
 memory and which do not require him to think. 
 
 But when can one say that such a spontaneous and proper 
 recitation of the subject taught has fulfilled its purpose? 
 Certainly not until it is thoroughly understood and has taken 
 full possession of the heart and being of the child. There- 
 fore it behooves us to guard earnestly against premature 
 reviews. It would be, for example, a grave error if one 
 should attempt to fix the content of a description, the bare 
 facts of a biblical story, before they are fully understood. 
 Apperception reaches its best fulfilment when suggestive 
 material is considered, not suddenly, but gradually, and it 
 needs plenty of time for this purpose. Skillful questions 
 and hints by the teacher must lead the child to correct wrong 
 perceptions, to clear up dark places, and in general, to im- 
 press the meaning, and the moral and religious truths of the 
 topic. And then, for the first time, when apperception is 
 thoroughly completed, will the child be able to speak, not 
 from memory, but out of the depths of his soul; then the 
 words will flow from the lips easily and warmly out of the 
 abundance of the heart. But when the text is being im- 
 pressed, before it is fully ingrafted into the thoughts and 
 feelings of the little ones, and before it is understood in 
 every part, many will be able to give neither a free nor a 
 connected statement of what has been heard. In the former 
 case there would be empty repetitions from memory and only 
 partial perception, not apperception attained ; in a word, it 
 would be mechanical learning. If the child has become
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 221 
 
 accustomed to rely upon the words of the teacher or of the 
 book, he no longer feels the need of searching out the deeper 
 meaning of the subject, and of drawing a picture of it for 
 himself by means of full and lively contemplation. 
 
 If the principal work, the statement or reproduction of the 
 story, is in the opinion of the children already accomplished, 
 the succeeding elucidation will find indifferent hearers and 
 unresponsive hearts. 
 
 With the oral and written representation of the thing 
 learned, the process of assimilation, as it appears, is finished, 
 and we could consequently close our investigation concern- 
 ing special, methodical arrangements for the purpose of 
 cordial union of the subject and object of apperception. 
 But instruction generally carries the treatment of the new 
 material still a step further ; the material appropriation of 
 the lesson does not suffice. The instruction seeks, where it 
 is possible, to place the pupil in possession of things that 
 are universally accepted and necessary, of general laws and 
 truths that are contained in the material treated. The 
 pupil should on the basis of the individual notions already 
 obtained, and of his concrete experiences, be able to rise to 
 a comprehension of the ideas as they are systematically 
 arranged in text-books. Then these ideas and laws lend to 
 the mind of the pupil the first true solidity and assurance ; 
 they complete for the first time the appropriation of the un- 
 known. They are at the same time the organs of apper- 
 ception, with the aid of which new experiences can be 
 quickly comprehended and rightly judged. It has to do 
 therefore with the introduction of a process of abstraction, 
 and since this, as we have already seen, presents only a 
 peculiar kind of mental acquisition, so the process of apper- 
 ception is followed by a second process of the same char- 
 acter, which the results of the preceding knowledge appro-
 
 222 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 printed, changed as it were into choicer, finer products, and 
 which distinguish the primary ideas from the secondary. We 
 have already repeatedly considered these apperceptive pro- 
 cesses, and may therefore be able to grasp the separate 
 methodical steps that are necessary for their introduction 
 and elaboration. First of all it is necessary to separate the 
 individual notions and facts, from which general truths are 
 evolved, from all other material, and to connect them with 
 similar perceptions. These can be derived from knowledge 
 already obtained by instruction, as well as from the other 
 experiences of the pupil. Results also which are added 
 through one's own reflection are not excluded. But in every 
 case only such things as are clearly related and are fully 
 known should be put together. Everything possible must 
 not be brought in because of a remote similarity ; but only 
 such material as awakens closely connected thoughts in the 
 minds of the children. When the related ideas are united 
 and have been carefully compared with one another, a mutual 
 cessation of the unessential, opposing characteristics will 
 surely take place ; they become obscure and disappear for 
 that reason before those parts of the structure that are 
 common to all ideas, and reach a high degree of clearness 
 and strength by means of manifold repetition. Whatever 
 within the circle of knowledge is brought systematically and 
 with special plainness into consciousness and firmly fixed 
 in proper order, constitutes the essential, necessary char- 
 acteristics of an idea or the content of a general law or a 
 universal judgment. So we reach the universal by the 
 way of combination, of association. 
 
 The concepts obtained from concrete objects and with 
 which they are still more or less connected, will be distin- 
 guished and fixed in a further step, that of systematizing or 
 combining. The oral expression for the result of the new
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 223 
 
 apperception will become fixed, and it " will be brought into 
 properly arranged, systematic connection with the known 
 material, and that which has been learned will be thoroughly 
 impressed upon the mind." In this way the pupil gradually 
 gains by his own effort the individual, properly arranged 
 principles that the text-books present. A long chain of 
 reasoning, an ingeniously arranged, logical development is 
 not needed in either this or the preceding step. For it is to 
 be feared that the pupil who is led unconsciously through a 
 long, logical course of reasoning to a certain result, will lose 
 his desire to examine the reasons on which it is based, and 
 also the connection between the concept and the fundamental 
 notion in which the concept takes its root. 
 
 Or suppose the pupil is really able independently to 
 repeat the ingenious, logical sequences that we find in many 
 (not in all) categories. So long as he is not able to do that, 
 he is not master of the subject. Still, perhaps, the logical 
 evidence of the concept or principle, which has been devel- 
 oped, is sufficient in itself so that the pupil is able to dispense 
 with the review of the path in which the knowledge was 
 obtained. Unfortunately universal concepts and judgments 
 are not like ripe fruits, which must be picked from the trees 
 on which they grow in order to preserve and utilize. They 
 are mental products, which cannot be conceived aside from 
 the ideas out of which they sprang, which exist only in and 
 with them, which, in reality, are not separated but only 
 differentiated from them. 
 
 A concept, a general truth, is our real possession only 
 when we are vividly conscious of the concrete facts from 
 which it has been derived, or other similar facts. When a 
 logical characteristic or the exact words of a general judg- 
 ment have escaped us, we should be able to call it back into 
 consciousness by means of the concrete facts. And only so
 
 224 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 far as we are able to do this has the universal any logical 
 evidence for us. 1 The words of Scripture, " The prayer of 
 the righteous availeth much," is nothing but an empty form 
 without evidence or force to him who recalls no individual 
 case of prayer either by himself or others. 
 
 If now the teacher omits requiring the pupil to survey the 
 path by which he acquires concepts, and carefully to 
 examine the connection between these and his fundamental 
 notions, the evidence of the developed principle or concept 
 is certainly not thoroughly fixed in the mind of the pupil. 
 But in order to avoid this danger, and to enable the pupil to 
 produce at will the general results of his intellectual work, 
 by methods well understood by him and in which he has 
 confidence, or at least to maintain the concrete foundations 
 of such knowledge in the mind, the development of the 
 universal must not be attempted by means of a long, cleverly 
 compounded course of reasoning. It may be reached by 
 simple means, yet without too little thinking. The more 
 thoroughly the pupil has appropriated the preliminary con- 
 crete culture-material, and the more related notions are 
 associated with the newly gained knowledge, the easier the 
 process of abstraction is incited by a few questions. When 
 the pupil hesitates, it is better, in ninety-nine cases out 
 
 The direct evidence of our thinking always has its source in 
 immediate sense-perception. Therefore the translation of the word 
 " Evidence " as the " quality of being visible " (Anschaulichkeit) is not 
 far out of the way. WPXDT, Logik, p. 75. 
 
 Instead of leading the child's mind far beyond the immediate 
 objective world into the world of abstract ideas, and holding it there as 
 long and closely as possible, teaching must rather get away from 
 abstractions as soon as possible and return to concrete phenomena- 
 Otherwise the longer and more exclusively the children wander about 
 among concepts, the more certainly does experience prove that this very 
 cramming process leads them away from individual, independent think- 
 ing, instead of assisting them in it. PFUTEREB, Padagoy. Psychologie, 
 p. 246.
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 225 
 
 of a hundred, instead of a series of questions or a line of 
 reasoning, to go back tohis fundamental ideas from which 
 the concept should be evolved. This in all probability needs 
 supplementing and correcting, or, perhaps, fortifying and 
 explaining. 
 
 The process of abstraction ends with the establishing 
 and arranging of knowledge into a system, and its inculca- 
 tion (with reference to the form as well) . It may now 
 be asked whether with this the methodical treatment 
 of the material of instruction has reached its purpose, 
 whether the appropriation of the universal and the abstract 
 is so fully attained, that all that remains, namely the appli- 
 cation and practical utilization of the acquired concepts, 
 laws, and so forth, may not be left to the pupil. Experience 
 gathered from all sides has proved, that among the very 
 teachers who are most zealous in leading their pupils to a 
 thorough understanding of the objects employed in teaching, 
 not a few are inclined to answer this question affirmatively. 
 They believe that when a principle is made clear, its use is 
 assured ; they believe that with the introduction of the sub- 
 ject-matter into the understanding everything is completed, 
 and apperception is accomplished in the best manner. This 
 is a wide-spread error of our " enlightened" age, under the 
 consequences of which our school practice greatly suffers. 
 One goes from one extreme to the other : while formerly a 
 hard and soulless method of teaching laid the chief stress 
 upon cramming the material into the children without stop- 
 ping to ask whether it was understood, in our time the 
 tendency is seriously to neglect the drilling and the appli- 
 cation of the lesson. And the teacher who does his duty 
 in this matter, is in danger of the reproach, " mechanical 
 training," "spirit-killing grinding," "tiresome reiteration," 
 and such like forceful pedagogical expressions. On the other
 
 226 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 hand there is the ever returning complaint that our youth 
 have learned indeed much, yet know but little; that they 
 possess a great deal of knowledge, but limited readiness in 
 its use, and that a large part of the knowledge they get is 
 forgotten as soon as they are out of school. 1 
 
 The application of universal concepts to the concrete 
 seldom comes of itself; it must be- taught, shown, and 
 practiced in every branch of study. " That you understand 
 a thing thoroughly is not enough ; it must be at your tongue's 
 end, then you use it authoritatively." 
 
 When the reviewing and applying are omitted, when the 
 range of thought is constructed without being united in 
 every possible way with the other groups of ideas, the 
 power of influencing thoughts subordinate to it is lost, 
 no matter how clear the range of thought may be in itself. 
 Then it forms as it were an upper house of ideas suffi- 
 cient in itself, without recognising the lower house, or 
 taking into account any other ideas. It thus becomes 
 clear that an application of the systematic combination 
 of the matter learned must follow. The object of this step 
 is not to go over the work repeatedly and in every conceiv- 
 able way in order that it may be easily brought into use at 
 will, but to bring the material into closest relation and 
 liveliest assimilation with the pupil's present range of thought. 
 It must enable the pupil by many practical examples to 
 discover the universal in the concrete material of all branches 
 of knowledge, to comprehend it from every standpoint, and 
 thus easily pass onward from the concrete to the abstract. 
 It must cause him as often as possible to enter new fields of 
 
 'Perhaps the worst thing an evil genius lias presented this age is 
 " Knowledge without ability to use it." PESTALOZZI, Wie Gertrud etc., 
 XII. The well-known expression, "Knowledge is power," is only half 
 true. A much better rendering would be: "Ability to do (KSnnen) is 
 power."
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 227 
 
 thought through concepts and rules already in his possession. 
 It must lay before him numerous, judicious problems for 
 solution, and require in oral and written presentations free 
 application of the knowledge gained. A reverse practice 
 of proceeding from the universal to the individual is also 
 recommended. What we demand here has already been 
 practiced in a certain sense for a long time in one branch, 
 namely, in arithmetic. In this it never occurs to any to 
 leave the application of a rule to the child ; and whoever 
 should attempt it would soon be enlightened by the complete 
 failure that would result. One may well wonder that like 
 experiences in most other branches have not called forth 
 equal discernment, and the same procedure as in arithmetic. 
 For it is beyond question that, e. g., in moral instruction, 
 quite as little as in arithmetic may general principles be used 
 with the pupil, without assuring their use by causing their 
 absorption through numerous examples, and by introduction 
 into such relations of life as call out the moral judgment of 
 the pupil. 
 
 It is conceded that all universal, historical truths, all 
 geometrical theorems and physical laws, can only be inalien- 
 ably appropriated when the instruction leads them into closest 
 connection with living questions and exigencies, and offers 
 examples from the practical life and experience of the child 
 for solution. Every subject taught, therefore, should have 
 an exercise and drill book, as in arithmetic ; or at least the 
 application of the material learned must be assured by means 
 of such repetitions as are made in teaching mathematics. 
 For constant, manifold use of the material taught not 
 only intensifies the clearness of it, but it also assimilates 
 it with numerous ranges of thought, so that a fluent reproduc- 
 tion is assured. It brings forward the plain, comprehensible 
 characteristics which the pupil again and again recognizes in
 
 228 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 concrete things. It makes so many concrete fields subject 
 to the universal that the latter is supported as with countless 
 pillars, and is retained in consciousness by a rich treasure 
 of strong sense- perceptions. In a word, it gives to apper- 
 ception its first real foundation. In this manner it is pro- 
 vided that the newly learned facts shall not remain as dead 
 material in the midst of acquired notions, but shall develop 
 an assured activity and impulsive power. Knowledge now 
 becomes power, and power becomes volition. 
 
 "When the pupil does not put away his school thoughts 
 with his school implements, but likes to make use of what he 
 has learned in school outside of it : when, for example, he 
 borrows the characters of history and imitates them in work 
 and play ; when he carries out practically what he has learned 
 in natural history ; when he voluntarily seeks to extend and 
 fix what he has learned, by observation and by diligent re- 
 search ; then a proper mental activity has been attained, 
 then we see knowledge that is in the very best way to be 
 transposed into volition. That is what Goethe meant when 
 he said, " The secret of teaching consists in reducing pro- 
 blems to postulates." 
 
 There are, therefore, five methodical steps which must be 
 taken in the treatment of a lesson. The preparation (analy- 
 sis), the presentation (synthesis), the combination (associa- 
 tion), the recapitulation (system), and the application. 
 They indicate the method by which a complete apperception 
 of the culture-material is accomplished ; first, careful obser- 
 vation (steps one and two), then proper combination (steps 
 three and four), and, lastly, practical realization of the 
 result of the lesson (fifth step). The teacher must follow 
 this course, as a rule, although freedom is allowed him in 
 special cases. 
 
 Such freedom is allowable, for example, when there is not
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 229 
 
 sufficient time in a lesson to present all the material as a 
 unit. Then, only so much of the analytical material should 
 be introduced in the preparation as is necessary for the 
 particular new material brought forward in this recitation. 
 In this case the analysis will not appear in its completeness, 
 but will be given in parts as is needed for the separate topics, 
 preparatory to synthesis. We could proceed in like manner 
 when the great variety of material to be analyzed threatens 
 to disturb the unity of the analysis. 
 
 If, furthermore, the acquired culture-material is so rich in 
 generally accepted truths that it gives rise to more than one 
 concept or one rule, a single concept must be brought to full 
 apperception before another is introduced. In this way the 
 steps, association, system, and application, will be employed 
 several times, at least as often as is necessary to evolve the 
 universal and generally accepted. 1 
 
 This requirement presupposes indeed a definite, pedagogi- 
 cally correct choice in the subject-matter of instruction. 
 For, without question, encyclopaedic presentations, or dis- 
 connected topics in history, do not, as a rule, admit of a 
 complete combination and a thorough treatment of the lesson 
 according to the formal steps. To one who holds inflexibly 
 to certain lines in choice of material, the application of the 
 formal steps will easily become merely a routine. The correct 
 result can only be attained when care is exei'cised to present 
 to the pupil an entire and complete view of the whole sub- 
 ject. The formal steps bring forward important, valuable, and 
 connected material, which should be separated into a series 
 of " methodical units." Under these units is included not 
 
 1 For an extended treatment of these topics, see McMurry's " General 
 Method," Public School Publishing Company, Bloomington, Illinois, or 
 DeGarmo's " Essentials of Method," D. C. Heath & Co., Boston. See 
 also Rein's " Outlines of Pedagogics," C. W. Bardeen, Syracuse, N. Y.
 
 230 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 merely a part, or a topic of some subject, hut a concrete 
 whole, a group of valuable (internal or external) percep- 
 tions, which contain an important concept or a universal 
 truth. Nor does it suffice to group favorite subjects and 
 separate them into topics, but attention must be paid to the 
 articulation of the material, considered as to its culture con- 
 tent, and how it presents itself in general and in all applicable 
 CMOS. The requirement as to the treatment of the material 
 according to the formal steps applies, as we have seen, only 
 for subjects in which a new concrete culture-material can be 
 intelligently assimilated and its elements brought forward 
 towards abstraction. 
 
 Hence it follows that there are two essential limitations in 
 applying our general principle. In the first place, there is 
 no doubt that the subjects of general review and examination, 
 the objects studied school journeys, in so far as the obser- 
 vations made are classified, likewise those subjects which 
 require technical skill in their acquirement, do not require so 
 close an application of the formal steps. For here it does 
 not concern the knowledge already gained, or the acquiring 
 of new truths, but the review of ideas, or of bodily activity. 
 
 A second case is possible when a lesson offers, indeed, 
 new, concrete material, but composed only of known, well 
 comprehended elements. A piece in reading, an historical 
 narration, a natural history or geography theme often brings 
 simply a new sense-perception to an already acquired concept, 
 a confirmation of knowledge already possessed. In this case 
 it would manifestly be forcing the culture-material, if one 
 should insist upon the use of all the five formal steps, and 
 should associate, systematize and apply where there is noth- 
 ing new to abstract. It is then sufficient to allow the pupils 
 to recognize what is valid in the concrete, but for the rest to 
 conclude the methodical treatment, with a thoughtful com-
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 231 
 
 bination of the new material. Or the new material may first 
 be explained, and then, when one or more related topics or 
 branches are brought in and appropriated, in the same 
 manner related third, fourth and fifth steps may follow the 
 several syntheses. 
 
 When, finally, material for teaching is offered that is rich 
 in concepts rather than sense-perceptions, i. e., in abstract 
 form suitable for teaching, the question of methodical unity 
 cannot enter; for the latter always arises from concrete 
 material. A text of scripture, an article of the catechism, 
 a sacred hymn, cannot be treated according to the formal 
 steps. They will, in most cases, need to be united to 
 one of the units of historical or religious instruction, which 
 prepares for a correct understanding of them. When the 
 child has grasped the real content on the basis of a rich 
 material obtained by sense-perception, when he succeeds in 
 fixing the content by means of the steps of the system, these 
 steps give the knowledge obtained a classical form, or they 
 serve him as an authoritative confirmation. But how is it 
 when they arise only after instruction in biblical history? 
 Many parts of the Bible must necessarily be subjects for 
 special lessons after the common-school course (with us 
 Sunday-school) is ended ; take, for example, many important 
 chapters from the Epistles. 
 
 The pupil should be able, when he enters upon the practical 
 duties of life, by diligent and intelligent reading of the 
 scriptures, to extend his knowledge and find strength and 
 comfort in the hour of sorrow and temptation. Systematic 
 instruction in the catechism will have an important place in 
 the course of study. But what enters here as abstract con- 
 tent of instruction should not be developed by the method of 
 observation and abstraction according to the formal steps, 
 but it should be presented to the pupil directly ; he should
 
 232 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 be able to help himself under direction of the teacher, aided 
 by a rich treasure of religious views and experiences, and 
 he will learn to understand and grasp the truth for himself. 
 By this means he will show that the persons and deeds of 
 sacred history have life and power in his soul. And so he 
 applies in a single step of method what he has learned 
 in religious conviction and insight in all the preceding years. 
 
 To sum up : when the teaching presents no new, concrete 
 culture-material for conscious appropriation, or when this 
 material contains no new general elements, the formal 
 steps cannot be followed. 
 
 As in the case of culture-material, so the general accept- 
 ance of the formal steps experiences a limitation with 
 respect to the ability of different children to acquire. 
 
 "VVe have seen that the complete assimilation of matter 
 to be learned involves a double process of apperception ; 
 that it ends in a process of abstraction, a process of con- 
 densation of what has been newly learned in general 
 notions and general truths. The formal steps are together 
 intended to secure the carrying out of this process to com- 
 pletion. But the pupil in the lower grades of the public 
 school is but little disposed or prepared to perform the act 
 of logical abstraction. His strength and interest are still so 
 taken up with the reception of new ideas, the number of his 
 definite perceptions of the various classes represented in the 
 different spheres of experience is still so insufficient, that to 
 demand of him the formation of general notions even 
 though it be but in the form of psychological ideas 1 
 
 1 The author refers here to the distinction between " logical " and 
 " psychological " ideas, the former being ideas representing the essential 
 character of the several particulars involved, while " pyschological " ideas 
 are unscientific generalizations, in which the process of abstraction has 
 not been completed, leaving therefore in the abstraction still many un- 
 essential qualities. Trant.
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 233 
 
 would be for the most part to demand in vain a very unfa- 
 miliar labor. Generalization must not be premature ; it must 
 always come out as ripe fruit from a fullness of similar concrete 
 experiences. It is not to be developed artificially, if it is 
 not to remain an empty word, a plant without roots. It 
 should not appear until the richness of the material of in- 
 struction and the very variety of what is learned compel 
 the combination and arrangement of the essential elements in 
 a generalization. The pupil in the lower grades must 
 accordingly be spared the effort of abstraction. The pro- 
 cess of apperception will always be brought to an end with 
 the first division, that is, with providing for the thorough 
 observation and understanding of the new matter for its own 
 sake. The essential and significant elements of it are to be 
 specially emphasized, even if only as a particular observa- 
 tion, and the pupils are gently to be led to join that which 
 is learned with similar concepts, forming groups or series 
 according to the measure of the pupil's experience. Finally, 
 the teacher should seek by varied exercises to insure the great- 
 est possible readiness in gaining these desired results of in- 
 struction. In this way there is secured a gradual preparation 
 for later abstraction in the same field, for the comprehension 
 of the ideal and universally valid principles involved in the 
 material of instruction ; thus the pupil learns by and by to 
 proceed from the first less complete apperception to that 
 which is more thorough and perfect. 
 
 Such is also the case in certain instances even with the 
 more mature scholar. For even he is not always able to 
 draw out at once the treasure of ideal and universally valid 
 principles presented in the concrete material of instruction. 
 "When he first begins to work his way into a new field of 
 knowledge, where fundamental principles, the beginnings of a 
 new study, are involved as in the case of a new language
 
 234 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 the pupil will be able only with difficulty to proceed to 
 the logical comprehension of the subject. He has, as yet, at 
 his command too few definite and similar facts to be able to 
 determine, by a process of abstraction, the logical content of 
 all subject-matter of instruction. Here, likewise, the teacher 
 will be obliged for the beginning, at least to give up 
 the complete carrying out of the process of apperception. 
 In that case the elaboration of the material of instruction 
 ends with the acquisition of series and groups of ideas, 
 as, for example, of the traits of an historical person, a series 
 of dates, a group of grammatical forms, the description of a 
 country, the drawing of mountains and river valleys and 
 it must be reserved to a later consideration to unite these 
 results with others into a higher form of knowledge. 
 
 It might be urged against us that in this way the culture- 
 content of the material for instruction is but imperfectly 
 appropriated, in so far as the pupil does not rise to an ideal 
 comprehension of that content. But while the necessary ma- 
 turity and experience required for such comprehension are 
 undoubtedly lacking to the scholar in the lower grade, while 
 he still prefers to think in sense-perceptions, and the mere 
 reception and uniting of the elements of a new sphere of 
 knowledge demand the full mental power of the more mature 
 scholar, we must, whether willingly or not take this 
 fact into account, and not for the sake of a stiff formula 
 introduce system and application where there is nothing, as 
 yet, to abstract. 
 
 Besides, it is quite possible, while traversing only a part 
 of the two processes of apperception, to secure the appro- 
 priation by the pupil of the important elements of the 
 material of instruction according to his power of apprehen- 
 sion at the time. When, for example, we direct the mind 
 of the child from concrete facts of Sacred History to an
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 235 
 
 intimation of the goodness and wisdom of God, when the 
 pupil is led clearly to comprehend and fix in mind the ethical 
 traits which command our approbation in the historical 
 person, when in the consideration of a subject in geography 
 or natural history, we bring out certain typical properties 
 into sharp relief, or in language lessons place related forms 
 side by side, in all these cases we make the scholar distinctly 
 conscious of the essential, significant, and universally valid 
 elements of the material of instruction, even if only in the 
 form of an observation. When now the instruction in each 
 department produces more and more such valuable typical 
 observations and joins them together in groups and series, 
 when finally these become so numerous as to lead to their 
 union in a general notion or a general truth, then, at length, 
 all those concrete departments of experience which belong to 
 the generalization, without being traversed in a process of 
 abstraction, acquire for the pupil increased clearness and 
 significance, through their relation to that generalization. 
 So the thorough assimilation of former materials of instruc- 
 tion is accomplished by retroactive apperception, and the 
 culture-value which they hold is secured to the pupil in a 
 natural way without over-haste or premature generalizing. 
 A second elaboration of the same material of instruction, as 
 demanded by the theory of concentric circles, 1 is then 
 unnecessary. 
 
 But some objector may ask : If abstraction is banished 
 
 1 The theory of concentric circles or concentric instruction is to be 
 clearly distinguished from the Herbartian doctrine of concentration. 
 According to the concentric circles, the pupil is made to study the same 
 historical period repeatedly in successive years, going each time more 
 deeply into the subject and mastering more details. The Herbartians 
 devote successive years to successive historical periods, and in each year 
 of the course concentrate the instruction in other lines geography, 
 natural history, language, etc., around the historical material as the heart 
 of the whole course.
 
 236 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 from a part of instruction, what remains of the " principle" 
 of the formal steps ? If instruction covers, strictly speaking, 
 only the first three steps, does it not give up for the most 
 part the determination and application of generalizations in 
 the steps of system and method? Certainly, and it is pre- 
 cisely this that constitutes the second limitation, to which 
 the universality of the formal steps is subject. 
 
 To be sure, the formation and impression of groups and 
 series of ideas might be regarded a step of system, and 
 going over the same in a different order (as takes place for 
 instance in the application of orthographical series in compo- 
 sitions or dictations on examination) as a step of method, 
 since there certainly exists a certain resemblance between 
 these mental activities and the regular carrying out of the 
 process of abstraction. And so Ziller and likewise Rein are 
 accustomed throughout to describe as " system" a series of 
 numbers, the drawing of the mountains of a country or the 
 map of a battlefield, the arrangement of the matter treated 
 in history, a series of dates, and the like, 1 which are to be 
 treated in a more advanced grade as expressing general 
 notions. But an historical table, a drawing, a graphic 
 presentation of the historical matter, a geographical descrip- 
 tion, are neither expressions of general notions nor anything 
 universally valid and necessary. They are acquired as some- 
 thing very individual, not by way of abstraction. But Ziller 
 makes it an essential characteristic of the elaboration of a 
 methodical unit according to the formal steps that the general 
 notions and universally valid elements involved in material of 
 instruction be appropriated by the scholar through a process of 
 abstraction. It follows that, whenever one must be limited 
 to the acquisition of series and groups of ideas, the steps 
 
 < Ziller, MattriaUtn, etc., pp. 113, 125, 137. Rein, Picket und Scheller, 
 5. Schuljahr, second edition, pp. 59, 04.
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 237 
 
 of system and method in the strict sense are out of the 
 question ; the complete carrying out of the formal steps is 
 then impossible, provided the original notion of those steps 
 is otherwise to be maintained. It answers fully to the 
 psychological facts if, at the age when general notions are 
 not to be abstracted, but only a preparation for them to be 
 made, the elaboration of the matter of instruction be brought 
 to a close with the many-sided union of its principal elements. 
 Certain general characteristics, typical concepts, belong to 
 the elements so brought into union. This course indicates, 
 by the description of the methodic activity involved, that a per- 
 fect abstracting appropriation is not yet possible or intended. 
 Such a course is to be recommended moreover on one other 
 ground. The complete carrying out of the formal steps from 
 the lowest to the highest class is justified only when the notion 
 of system is changed according to the need, that is, when we 
 understand by the word at one time general notions and what 
 is universally valid, at another only dispositions and material 
 for the making of general notions. But in this way the 
 theory appears vacillating and indefinite. The beginner 
 adheres to Ziller's exposition of the theory according to which 
 a process of abstraction is always to be introduced, and 
 accordingly applies abstraction even to the material of the 
 first school-year. How much painful artificiality, how much 
 unchildlike reflection and precocious thinking, how many 
 worthless combinations of concepts can be brought to pass 
 in this manner, is not far to seek, and is unfortunately fully 
 attested by experience. But such misunderstandings may be 
 avoided if the idea of system be taken in only one, and that 
 the strict original meaning of the term, if it be borne in mind 
 that, according to Herbart, " the earlier instruction cannot 
 give us system in the higher sense." 
 
 1 Padag. Schrtften, I., 406.
 
 238 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 We have seen that in many cases either the material of 
 instruction or the limited mental grasp of the scholar at the 
 time does not admit of a deeper apperception, the derivation 
 of universally valid and general principles ; that in these 
 cases the carrying out of a process of abstraction, such as 
 the steps of system and method demand, will not be at- 
 tempted; and that the teacher will then limit himself to 
 securing the intelligent comprehension of the concrete facts 
 and their combination among themselves as well as with 
 related concepts. 
 
 But the more clearly conscious one becomes of the pre- 
 suppositions and the limitations under which alone the 
 application of the formal steps is allowable and useful, so 
 much the more will one rid one's self of the notion that they 
 are a mould in which Herbart and Ziller have attempted to 
 mechanize the whole of instruction. 1 What do they do but 
 give rule and order to the act of instruction in accordance 
 with a universally recognized law of the human mind? Or 
 is it not a fact that a thorough apperception of the material 
 of instruction takes place only when instruction proceeds 
 from the external or internal observation of the child, 
 proceeds from this to abstract thought, in order, finally, to 
 insure the right application of the results of such thought in 
 practical exercises. Now this methodical procedure, which 
 the nature of the human mind prescribes for us, is also the 
 method of the formal steps. It proposes nothing more than 
 to secure to the scholar a natural and thorough appropriation 
 of the material of instruction. Where more or other than 
 
 1 The most current expression which this preconception finds is the 
 assertion that it is demanded that every recitation hour should be con- 
 ducted according to the " scheme " of the formal steps. That was never, 
 so far as we know, demanded by Ziller or Herbart, and can very seldom 
 take place, for the reason that the thorough appropriation of a unit of 
 instruction demands, as a rule, more than one recitation boor.
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 239 
 
 that goes on under this rubric, it is the letter and not 
 the spirit of the formal steps that rules. But it cannot be 
 charged against the formal steps as a fault, that the theory 
 prescribes a definite succession in the acts of instruction, or 
 that it does not leave it to caprice to decide which of them 
 precedes and which follows. The freedom of caprice is 
 rightly an object of hatred in all spheres of human knowl- 
 edge and volition ; should it be allowed in Pedagogy, this 
 youngest of the sciences ? Certainly not. For the rule was 
 recognized even in earlier times for the safe guidance of the 
 process of learning in more than one subject, as Dorpfeld 
 has clearly shown : l From observation to thought, from 
 thought to application ! And every capable teacher continues 
 to hold fast to this succession of steps. According to this 
 it appears that Ziller erred only in proposing five steps, 
 (strictly speaking only four!) in place of the customary 
 three. To follow those three is right and good ; but to 
 accept five steps, and those bearing some strange names, is 
 inconsistent with the freedom of the teacher. Such is the 
 objection that one hears. 2 If such is the case the whole 
 contention regarding the "hateful" steps runs out, as it 
 seems to us, in the case of most opponents, into an idle 
 strife about words. It is hardly necessary to show that the 
 five formal steps may be easily referred back to the familiar 
 trinity of stages of learning. When Ziller, likewise prompted 
 by a deeper insight into the process of mental appropriation, 
 preferred to separate the act of observation and of abstract 
 thought into two partial steps, it was simply with the purpose 
 of offering to the teacher as definite and practically fruitful 
 directions as was possible for the sure carrying out of the 
 process of apperception in the child. He was not concerned 
 
 1 Der didaktische Materialismus, p. 161 ff. 
 
 * Sherfig: Der Begriff der Bildung, 1885, p. 56.
 
 240 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 with setting up an entirely new teaching process, but with 
 rounding out old established rules and rendering them 
 more comprehensive. It was not that what was known 
 to everyone was presented " only in slightly different 
 words " ; but rather what was old was presented in a 
 new, that is, an improved and enlarged form. But the 
 original conception of the act of learning as a process of 
 apperception is a new thing in the Herbart-Ziller theory; 
 the arrangement of recognized measures of instruction in a 
 strictly ordered series of steps of method, answering to the 
 course of the process of learning, is new ; the introduction of 
 analysis as a first step to the appropriation of the material of 
 instruction is new ; and finally the founding of all these ped- 
 agogic demands on a clear psychological insight is also new. 
 To instruct according to the formal steps means, then, to 
 do persistently and with conscious purpose what remained 
 otherwise given over to a happy intuition. 1 
 
 1 It is not seldom held by experienced practical teachers, against the 
 elaboration of the culture-material according to the formal steps, that 
 they demand too much time and do not permit the mastering of the task 
 assigned. We are far from entering a plea for a useless lingering upon 
 unimportant matters, a wearisome prolixity in the introduction or the 
 presentation of the subject, such as the spiritless imitation of the formal 
 steps may often bring with it. We also purpose to secure to the children 
 each hour the feeling of vigorous progress in the realm of mind. But 
 when the over-pressure in the material for instruction assigned to each 
 separate year of the course does not permit a thorough appropriation of 
 the things taught, it certainly does not follow from that fact that the 
 formal steps are unpractical. Much more is it advised in that case so to 
 limit the things taught that they can be imparted in such manner as to 
 mould the pupil's mind. Less would be more that certainly holds 
 good iu the case of many of our courses of study. For in truth the 
 teacher who advances slowly but thoroughly, goes further than one who 
 is so anxious for the accomplishment of the task assigned that he cannot 
 attain to a quiet, warm-hearted elaboration of the instruction-material. 
 
 " The way of Order, even if it goes a crooked course, is no side-path." 
 Schiller's Piccolomini, I., 4.
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY". 241 
 
 We are at the end of our investigation. It undertook to 
 present the evidence that all learning is, in the main, an 
 apperception, and that, accordingly, it is the chief problem 
 of the teacher regularly and surely to introduce the process 
 of mental appropriation on the part of the scholar, and, as 
 far as possible, to carry it through to the end. This demand 
 extends, as we have seen, to nearly all spheres of instruc- 
 tion; it involves the weightiest principles of didactics. 
 Those universal imperatives, for example, in which one 
 branch of the newer pedagogy is accustomed to formulate its 
 theory such sayings as ' ' from the known to the unknown," 
 "from the near to the remote," "from the easy to the 
 difficult," may be referred back, as far as they contain 
 truth, to the requirement, " Provide for easy and thorough 
 apperception " ; and they are valid only to the degree in 
 which they answer to this principle. 1 For the strong, apper- 
 ceiving concepts of the child are solely and alone the known 
 to which the unknown is to be united, the near with reference 
 to the remote, the easy leading up to the more difficult. 
 Whatever does not belong to these aids to apperception 
 remains strange to the pupil, no matter how near it may be 
 to him in time and space, or how simple and easy it may 
 seem ; it cannot, in any way, promote the appropriation of 
 the new. 
 
 Accordingly, in seeking to derive the general didactic 
 rules from one leading principle, and in setting forth the 
 process of apperception as the content of the act of learning 
 and the chief end and aim of the act of teaching, we believe 
 
 1 Although attention has already been called from the most diverse 
 points of view for example, even, by Diesterweg, to the fact that these 
 sayings have only relative value, yet they still belong to those favorite 
 pedagogic watchwords and half-true sayings that are most frequently 
 used and most often misunderstood.
 
 242 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 we are able to satisfy the demands of scientific pedagogy in 
 a higher degree, and gain a deeper insight into the weightiest 
 problems of method than if we set out to formulate a series 
 of imperatives which mutually include one another and none 
 of which can be separated in logical strictness from the 
 other. 1 And as our theory so also can our pedagogic 
 practice make a gain through such a peculiar conception of 
 the problem of instruction. It is said : Every method is 
 good which leads to the end, and the value of a process of 
 instruction is measured simply by the knowledge and skill 
 which the pupil is led by this means to acquire. This, 
 however, is a false and one-sided conception. How often 
 the outward success of a method is bought by a wholly 
 unnecessary expenditure of time and strength ; how often all 
 pleasure and joy in the subject of instruction is quite driven 
 away from the child by a tedious process of teaching ! Such 
 a "good" method, on which all his life long the scholar will 
 look back only with discomfort, reaches the desired end only 
 in appearance, while in reality it leads the pupil far astray ; 
 for it robs him of living interest, that indispensable con- 
 dition of further effort, without which any real, lasting 
 success of instruction is out of the question. So the import- 
 ant thing is not exclusively that something be appropriated, 
 but how the appropriation takes place. Not every way that 
 
 1 Compare, for example, the following nine principles of instruction, as 
 Lindner (Allgemeine Unterrichtslehre, sixth edition, pp. 82-101) lays them 
 downside by side: Instruct naturally, psychologically, through observa- 
 tion, in a manner to be easily comprehended, formatively, attractively, 
 for lasting results, practically, and in the instruction lead the scholar on 
 to self-activity. Die Schulerziehungszlehre of Schwarz and Curtmann 
 in the eighth edition, edited by Freicnsehner, even brings the number of 
 such general principles of instruction up to twenty-four. Here one seeks 
 in vain for the logical ground of division, the distinguishing characteris- 
 tic^ by which the ideas named may be clearly and sharply separated from 
 one another.
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 243 
 
 leads to the desired end is expedient, but only that one 
 which attains the end by the easiest way, and that most 
 suited to the nature of the scholar. Now, such an easy, 
 level way we believe we have described in these pages. 
 "We indicated above how much apperception unloads the 
 mind, and how much strength it saves the mind in conse- 
 quence. In preparing with the utmost care for that process, 
 in removing obstacles which would oppose themselves to any 
 intimate blending of the subject and the object of the act of 
 appropriation, in carrying out the process of apperception 
 once begun to certain and full completion by a strictly 
 methodical treatment of each unit of instruction, we un- 
 doubtedly aid essentially in rendering the act of learning 
 less difficult. We protect the individuality of the pupil in so 
 far as we allow him by the aid of his own familiar concepts 
 to comprehend what is new and unfamiliar. We promote 
 his self-activity as often as we allow him to attain the pro- 
 posed end either wholly or in part by ways of his own 
 choosing ; we heighten the joy of learning by enlisting his 
 own inmost thoughts and feelings in the instruction, and so 
 insure the many-sided application of what is taught. We 
 will not make apperception easy in the sense employed by' 
 the philanthropinists ; we do not advocate a kind of learning 
 that is all play. Work itself becomes pleasure to the pupil 
 as soon as he becomes acquainted with the aids to the 
 mastery of new knowledge which slumber within him. But 
 on this delight of learning we set the highest value ; for it 
 conceals in itself the germ of true interest. What comes easy 
 to the pupil, at the same tirrte increasing his strength that 
 wins his heart, and continues for a long time, perhaps to the 
 end of life, to be an object of his liveliest desire. Such 
 delight "is the heaven under which everything flourishes 
 except poison."
 
 244 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 And we strive after one thing more. When we, from 
 principle, offer the pupil nothing new in instruction without 
 having first called up old, familiar concepts within him, 
 when we seek in the steps of association and application to 
 establish a many-sided and intimate connection of what has 
 been newly learned with the other spheres of thought, we 
 plainly prevent the isolation and division of the separate 
 thoughts and promote the formation of rich, well-united 
 concept groups. But the richer a group is, the more fre- 
 quently it offers occasion for calling it back into conscious- 
 ness, and the more frequently it is repeated, the greater 
 becomes the ease with which it returns. Further, in insisting 
 on presenting the matter of instruction divided into sections 
 of suitable length, and the regular alternation of learning 
 and thinking, in prompting the pupil to rise from numerous 
 particular concepts by means of comparison and abstraction 
 to general notions, and with the help of these to master 
 the concrete material of experience, we provide for the logical 
 articulation and elaboration of the branches of his knowledge. 
 But the richer, better articulated, and more easily repro- 
 duced a concept group is, the greater is its power and 
 the influence which it exercises on other groups, the better 
 suited it appears to be to act in its turn as an apperceiving 
 mass on new incoming concepts. So as the thought 
 material is acquired, for the most part, by the way of 
 apperception, it serves again at the same time to introduce 
 new processes of assimilation ; the product of appercep- 
 tion becomes a means of apperception. But this aptitude 
 of the concepts and general notions for apperception is the 
 best gift that the school can confer on the pupil for the 
 journey through life. The problem of the school is not 
 to be sought for in making the pupil ready for life, 
 so that he should have nothing further to learn ; it can-
 
 ITS APPLICATION TO PEDAGOGY. 245 
 
 not do that. Much rather can and will instruction prepare 
 the scholar only to find his way with the help of what he has 
 learned in the domains of knowledge, feeling, and volition, 
 and to appropriate the new things which the school of life 
 gives him to learn through old, familiar acquirements. If the 
 pupil succeeds in this ; if he presses boldly on in the path 
 of knowledge ; if his aesthetic ideals, his religious principles, 
 and ethical maxims prove so strong and lively that even 
 under the most difficult circumstances he knows how to 
 distinguish the beautiful from the common and ugly, the 
 divine from the ungodly, the morally good from the bad, and 
 even in complicated cases to find the right, then instruction 
 has accomplished enough, and fairly contributed its part 
 in the service of education to the formation of a morally 
 vigorous character.
 
 PART III. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF APPERCEP- 
 TION. 
 
 The idea of apperception is not a result of modern psy- 
 chology; it is no artificial expression invented for the 
 purpose of giving well known pedagogical truisms a new, 
 learned, philosophic garment. Far from it : it has a history 
 of its own. A look into its historical development will not 
 only dispel that prejudice, but essentially aid in the compre- 
 hension of the theory of apperception. 
 
 A. The Idea of Apperception with Leibnitz. 
 
 The first who applied the idea of apperception in philoso- 
 phy was Leibnitz. He arrived at it in his investigation of 
 the nature and chief activities of the human soul. The latter 
 is to him a simple, indivisible substance (monad), whose 
 life consists chiefly in continual change or transition from 
 one perception to another. These perceptions, or inner 
 conditions, it is true, reflect the outer world with its occur- 
 rences, but they are caused by these neither directly nor 
 indirectly ; on the contrary, they are created freely and 
 independently by the soul, according to its " inner prin- 
 ciple ' ' and from its own stores. They correspond , however, 
 without exception to those outer occurrences because the 
 omniscient God has previously so arranged the order of the
 
 HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF APPERCEPTION. 247 
 
 discursive conceptions and once for all so established 
 them, that they are always in harmony with things external 
 (Pre-established Harmony). Hence if the soul produces 
 perceptions every moment, it does not follow that it has 
 conceptions always equally valuable, that is, equally strong 
 and distinct. There are innumerable perceptions of which 
 we do not become conscious, because these impressions are 
 either too insignificant, or too numerous, or even too uni- 
 form. (We do not pay further attention for instance to the 
 movements of a mill or a waterfall, if by habit they 
 have become commonplace.) They are on the same level 
 with perceptions formed during swoon, dizziness, stupor 
 or dreamless sleep. These weak perceptions (whose efficacy 
 must not be underrated, since all actions performed with- 
 out deliberation, as well as habits and passions, depend 
 upon them) lack distinct consciousness and remembrance. 
 So long as we do not rise above them, our souls do not 
 perceptibly differ from those simple monads that have only 
 perceptions like the plants and lower animals. 
 
 But man has also stronger ideas, he produces perceptions 
 of which he is distinctly conscious and which therefore are 
 indelibly imprinted upon his memory. They may be de- 
 signated in contradistinction to the weak perceptions as 
 sensations (Leibnitz : "sentiments") or apperceptions. They 
 are the results of strong impressions, or of combination and 
 accumulation of numerous weak perceptions which in them- 
 selves were not apperceived. For of all our perceptions, 
 even of the weak ones, none are lost, and the distinct ones 
 arise gradually from perceptions too indistinct to be noticed. 
 Every distinct idea comprises an infinite -number of confused 
 perceptions. These distinct perceptions coupled with memory 
 do not belong to man exclusively ; the animal has them too, 
 hence it is credited, like ourselves, with having u &oul.
 
 248 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 Man alone is able to reach a higher stage in the activity 
 of conceiving, the step of reflexive cognition ; at this stage 
 he not only grasps things external, by means of more per- 
 fect perceptions, but he also comprehends their inner con- 
 nection, "connaissance des causes"] he recognizes and un- 
 derstands necessary and eternal truths, as we find them 
 recorded in science, the divine plan according to which all 
 things are arranged. And finally, while directing his atten- 
 tion to occurrences taking place in his own soul, he rises to a 
 recognition of his own self, to a conception of his ego^ to 
 self-consciousness. This conscious grasp of the content of 
 thought Leibnitz designates in his later works by the term 
 APPERCEPTION in contradistinction to mere perception. It is 
 the characteristic of rational souls or minds (esprits) . 
 
 From the foregoing it is seen that with Leibnitz the idea 
 of apperception is inconstant. First, he gives it the signi- 
 ficance of consciousness, or conscious distinct conceiving, 
 following the common usage of language according to which 
 " apercevoir " = to perceive, " s'apercevoir " = to observe, 
 or notice. Then again, he defines it as "la connaissance 
 reflexive," a thinking, grasping of the contents of a concep- 
 tion caused by arbitary attention, the reflective cognition of 
 our inner states. It cannot be said that the one definition 
 belongs exclusively to a former, the other to a later, period of 
 his activity as an author. For although in his ' ' Mouad- 
 ology " and his " Principles of Nature," the second definition 
 is much more prominent, allusions to the former definition 
 are by no means wanting, while on the other hand in his 
 " New Essays" some remarks prepare the way for his later 
 definition of the idea. 
 
 While thus the philosopher's view concerning the true 
 essence of apperception is left obscure, no doubt can be 
 entertained about one important characteristic. According
 
 HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF APPERCEPTION. 249 
 
 to Leibnitz the soul creates its conceptions not only out of 
 itself and by its own means, but also independently of ex- 
 ternal inducement or motive. Hence to apperception as a 
 kind of conceiving may be assigned the characteristic of 
 absolute spontaneity. This follows necessarily from his 
 supposition of a pre-established harmony. However, in 
 this Leibnitz did not consistently adhere to his original 
 view. If the soul reflects the universe like a living mirror 
 according to its level and point of view, if it be purely 
 passive in perceiving, and if its acts of cognition are at 
 least partly dependent upon the senses, in other words, 
 dependent upon the nature of things external as well as 
 upon the essence of the mind, then absolute spontaneity of 
 its action of conceiving cannot be said to be in harmony 
 with it. If we further consider that distinct ideas according 
 to Leibnitz arise gradually from weaker ones, and that they, 
 generally speaking, are called forth and created with the 
 aid of preceding conditions in the soul, it follows that the 
 activity of apperception is, to a certain degree, depend- 
 ent on the contents of the soul already present. It takes 
 place under the determining influence of those contents. 
 Hence Leibnitz's views concerning apperception may be 
 grouped as follows : 
 
 (1.) By apperception we understand distinct, conscious 
 conception coupled with remembrance, as well as thinking, 
 reflexive comprehension of the contents of our own mental 
 states, in fact, inner perception, or self-observation. 
 
 (2). It exerts itself as spontaneous activity, dependent, 
 however, upon the determining influence of the existing 
 contents of the soul. 
 
 The first of these two thoughts seems to have found 
 general recognition even with philosophers who did not share 
 his hypothesis of a pre-established harmony. Thus, for
 
 250 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 instance, Christian Wolf (1C78-1754) designated perception 
 as observing an object, and apperception as becoming 
 conscious of a perception. And Herder says, " all sensations 
 that rise to a certain distinctness become apperception, 
 thought; the soul knows that it perceives." 
 
 On the other hand, the spontaneity of apperception has 
 been adhered to by Kant ; he emphasizes it as an essential 
 characteristic of the idea. His theory of apperception, which 
 occupies a prominent position in his system of philosophic 
 criticism, may now enlist our attention. 
 
 B. Kant's Theory of Apperception. 
 
 In his memorable work "Critique of Pure Reason" 
 (1781), Kant places at the beginning of his investigations the 
 question, " What are the sources of all human knowledge? " 
 He finds that at first the senses (outer and inner) , by virtue 
 of their receptivity for outer impressions derived from 
 things, and from inner experiences of the emotions, offer the 
 raw, formless material of cognitions. These, in themselves 
 confused impressions and percepts are, with the aid of 
 imagination, arranged by being fitted into forms of space 
 and time already existing in the soul ; thus they are raised to 
 sense-perceptions " (Anschauungen) . But, in order that 
 these may obtain the significance of objects, certain inborn, 
 pure notions of the understanding are added, with which all 
 sense-perceptions must agree, to form an inner connection 
 between them. The perception and cognition of experiences 
 acquired by means of sense-perceptions, through the pure no- 
 tions of understanding, constitute, really, a judging, a con- 
 necting of different pictures according to their contents, a com- 
 bining of the (given) manifold in our cognition, a synthesis. 
 The unity of this manifold is accomplished in thought in what 
 he calls the categories. (Thus, for instance, we think the
 
 HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF APPERCEPTION. 251 
 
 percepts of lightning and thunder necessarily together in 
 the idea of cause and effect, causality being regarded as a 
 category of the mind.) What these pure notions of the 
 understanding are, that is, independent of all experience and 
 free of all emotions, is seen from the functions of the 
 active mind. There are as many pure notions of the under- 
 standing, or categories, as there are kinds of judgments. 
 Kant's table of categories, which places them under the 
 higher units of quantity, quality, relation and modality, 
 offers a complete list (See Watson's Selections from Kant, 
 pp. 51-2). 
 
 Hence, there are two sources of human knowledge : 
 experience, which offers the matei'ial of sense-perception or 
 percepts, and our self-active mind, which forms it into 
 cognitions or ideas. Two faculties correspond with these 
 sources : the faculty to receive sensations or percepts 
 (receptivity of the senses), and the faculty to call forth 
 ideas or concepts (spontaneity of the understanding) . Hence 
 the outer and inner experiences are not the only sources of 
 cognition, as Locke thought ; but previous to all impressions 
 are, a priori, the pure conceptions of space and time, as well 
 as the pure notions of the understanding, which we add to 
 the experiences as something inborn, or native, to the mind. 
 
 However, this presentation meets formidable ditllculties. 
 According to Kant, the categories perform the labor of 
 connecting manifold phenomena into cognitions, thus, and 
 only thus, making experiences possible. But if these 
 notions of the understanding, a priori, exist previous to, 
 and outside of all experience, if they are not created by it, 
 and have nothing in common with it how can they refer 
 to it, and how can we say that they first make experience 
 possible? The answer is: all cognition rests, as we saw, 
 upon the connection of the manifold into a necessary unity,
 
 252 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 that is to say, upon synthesis. The connection of the 
 manifold can never occur through the senses, and can, there- 
 fore, not be contained in the pure form of sense-perception. 
 Experience, it is true, tells us that two percepts (like 
 thunder and lightning) are acquired at the same time, but 
 that they should necessarily be thought as belonging together, 
 it does not teach. Hence, synthesis is not given in the 
 object of perception, but as accomplished by its subject; it 
 is the action of a spontaneous power of conceiving, i. e., of 
 the understanding. The pure notions of the understanding 
 are, therefore, necessarily to be added to impressions or 
 percepts from the outer world, because only with their aid 
 is synthesis, that is, cognition, possible. 
 
 But what is the final reason why the understanding 
 recognizes in a judgment the unity of different notions? 
 Why should I be obliged to thiak the manifold in experience 
 necessary, for instance, in the relation of cause and effect? 
 What makes possible and effects the connection of repre- 
 sentations (ideas) according to the categories? It is a fact, 
 that all manifold of sense-perception has a necessary relation 
 to the " I think " in the same subject in which this manifold 
 is found. The manifold elements contained in one concept, I 
 recognize wholly as mine. They are so, however, because 
 they belong to one and the same self-consciousness. In so 
 far as they all belong to one unchangeable ego, they consti- 
 tute one idea. But herein lie the reason and the possibility 
 of their necessary combination. Because I combine them 
 in one self-consciousness, I recognize their inner connection, 
 and I am conscious a priori of their unity, or their neces- 
 sary synthesis. The relation of our concepts to one and the 
 same ego, or self-consciousness (which is expressed in this, 
 that the " I think" accompanies, or may accompany all my 
 ideas and concepts) , makes possible a priori all synthesis,
 
 HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF APPERCEPTION. 253 
 
 all thinking cognition of experience. However, we are not 
 coerced by our experience, that is, by the matter of our 
 impressions (percepts) to this reflexive connection ; on the 
 contrary, it is an act of spontaneity, that is, of the soul's 
 activity, wholly self-dependent, and independent of exterior 
 influences. 
 
 Spontaneous activity, then, which combines in self-con- 
 sciousness the various impressions and ideas offered through 
 the senses, is called " APPERCEPTION " 1 by Kant. It is also 
 expressed as self -consciousness. 
 
 Indeed, apperception, as characterized in the foregoing, is 
 pure, original, transcendental; that is, it is that self-con- 
 sciousness which accompanies, or may accompany, our ideas 
 with "I think." It is designated as original, because it 
 exists before all experience ; as pure and transcendental, 
 because as spontaneous activity it does not depend upon the 
 matter of our perceptions. Their unity is founded in this, 
 that man recognizes all his ideas as his, that is, belonging to 
 one and the same unchangeable subject (the pure ego) . Hence 
 unity of original apperception is synonymous with conscious- 
 ness of the synthesis of ideas or their elements. The under- 
 standing is nothing else than the faculty to combine a priori, 
 and to bring the manifold of given ideas under the unity of 
 apperception. 
 
 From this, the fundamental importance of pure apper- 
 ception for Kant's theory of cognition becomes plain. If 
 the unity of different ideas is recognized in their relation to 
 self-consciousness, that is, through the unity of apperception, 
 the latter is the requisite of all judgmeut, of all cognitions. 
 It not only connects ideas, but gives this connection the 
 characteristic of necessity. 
 
 1 See Watson's Selections from Kant, p. G5.
 
 254 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 Its pre-supposition is, as we saw, the notion of the pure 
 ego, that self-consciousness which, according to Kant, does 
 not develop gradually by means of and along with experience 
 from without, but precedes it from the beginning, and ac- 
 companies all of our ideas. He calls it the transcendental 
 self-consciousness which lies beyond all outer experience, 
 because the unity of original apperception tells us nothing 
 about the nature of the pure ego. 
 
 But, besides this transcendental, there is also an empirical 
 self-consciousness ; besides the pure ego, an empirical ego to 
 which also we refer our ideas. This latter, however, changes 
 its content in the course of human life quite often, and is, 
 on account of its changeableness, not able to produce an 
 abiding identical self. In consequence of this, the relation 
 of the concepts to the empirical consciousness, or the em- 
 pirical apperception, cannot effect truly, correct cognitions. 
 It chiefly obeys the laws of association and hence forms only 
 accidental, not necessary combinations of ideas. 
 
 When a child, for instance, notices lightning and thunder 
 as phenomena, one of which follows the other in time, without 
 knowing the relation of cause and effect, it performs an act 
 of empirical apperception. 
 
 All differing empirical consciousness must, in order that I 
 may attribute it to myself, be connected in a single self-con- 
 sciousness. Hence all empirical consciousness has a necessary 
 relation to a transcendental consciousness, namely, that of 
 myself as the original apperception. Hence, also, the em- 
 pirical apperception pre-supposes the other, and is derived 
 from it. 
 
 It is plain then, that Kant's idea of apperception unites all 
 the characteristics which we found in Leibnitz's theory : 
 The logical connection of ideas, the thinking of general and 
 necessary truths, the reflexive comprehension of our inner
 
 HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF APPERCEPTION. 255 
 
 processes, their relation to our ego called forth by sponta- 
 neous activity of the soul. But that which with Leibnitz 
 was only hinted obscurely is here expressed very clearly. 
 What were there considered parallel expressions of one and 
 the same activity, are here combined to a strict logical unity. 
 The thinking of necessary truths is not a form of appercep- 
 tion differing from others, as, for instance, observation or per- 
 ception, or relation of our concepts to self-consciousness, but 
 it is the sequence of the latter. The idea of the pure ego is 
 not considered the possible result, but the necessary pre- 
 supposition of apperception. In this is found at the same 
 time the chief difference between Kant's and Leibnitz's ideas. 
 Leibnitz considers apperception the fruit of an extensive 
 development of the soul. As distinct ideas are formed from 
 unconscious impressions or perceptions, so from a combina- 
 tion of strong ideas apperception will arise, and the self-con- 
 sciousness thus gained lifts the soul to a rational being or 
 spirit. Kant does not recognize such a development of our 
 mental life. According to him, the pure ego, or self-con- 
 sciousness, is the original possession of the soul and the 
 transcendental apperception is that activity of the under- 
 standing which proves active from the very beginning in 
 perceiving and representing or conceiving objects. The 
 ability to apperceive in this sense is not acquired gradually 
 by mental labor, nor is it founded upon well-arranged contents 
 of the soul, but is given previous to all experience from the 
 outer world ; it alone makes possible the higher activities of 
 the mind, thinking and cognition. 
 
 C. The Idea of Apperception with Herbart. 
 
 Herbart undertook a development of the theory of apper- 
 ception in an essentially different direction. He, too, started 
 from certain thoughts of Leibnitz. While Leibnitz thought
 
 256 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 apperception to be a result of mental building-up of many 
 weak perceptions into ideas, Herbart asks, in what manner 
 weak impressions or ideas can be raised to a higher degree 
 of consciousness. He consequently investigates the condi- 
 tions of apperception as given in the contents of the soul 
 already existing, in order to penetrate deeper into the nature 
 of the process. And there he finds that ideas are apperceived 
 (that is brought to greater lucidity) only when they them- 
 selves become objects of a new act of perceiving, when other 
 series of ideas notice them, so to speak, and combine them 
 with themselves. He points this out at first in the appercep- 
 tion of outer sensation or impressions. In other words, it 
 takes ideas to apperceive ideas. 
 
 Every simple or complete perception (or sensation) which 
 enters consciousness through the gates of the senses, acts 
 upon the ideas present as a stimulus. It repels everything 
 contrary to it that may be present in consciousness, and 
 recalls all similar things, which now rise with all their con- 
 nections. This complex perception (or sensation) invades 
 several older groups or series simultaneously, and thus in- 
 duces new conditions of fusion or arrest. While thus it causes 
 a lively notion of the ideas, it may be compared with a light, 
 casting its rays all around it. The stimulated mass of ideas 
 raised simultaneously, resembles an arched vault extending 
 in all directions from a centre. As long as this arching 
 continues, the central perception has, by virtue of its stimu- 
 lating power, the controlling influence in consciousness. 
 But the more it checks all less similar ideas, that were called 
 up as opposites, the more they recede, and allow older, quite 
 similar ideas to rise, favored as they are, and gradually 
 form the point of the arch ; this becomes the more raised or 
 pointed the longer the entire process lasts. Now when a 
 fusion of the new perception (sensation) takes place with
 
 HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF APPERCEPTION. 257 
 
 those ideas reproduced anew, and standing high in con- 
 sciousness, the latter assert or maintain superiority (controll- 
 ing influence). For the ideas coming from within are, by 
 virtue of their connections, stronger than the single new 
 percept ; especially since it diminishes in power after its 
 stimulating effect is lost. The new perception must suffer, 
 being placed in rank and file ; it is made an acquisition of the 
 older series of ideas. 
 
 The same relation, pre-supposed between sensations or 
 percepts and older ideas, may be repeated between the 
 weaker and stronger notions reproduced, or called up. A 
 weaker series of ideas, one which is less deeply rooted with- 
 in the entire horizon of thought, may be excited and de- 
 veloped in its own way in the mind. Through it a related 
 mass of thought is called back, i. e., one stronger and 
 deeper-lying. At first the former, more excited series of 
 ideas presses back the second series with reference to its 
 opposing elements. This second series is thus brought to a 
 tension and presses upward all the more powerfully. Now it 
 shapes the first series in accordance with its o\vu form, 
 holding it, as it were, by its similar and fusing elements, 
 repelling it at other points. Here we have an acquisition 
 of ideas which may be designated, in contradistinction to 
 outer, as inner apperception ; or, better, as apperception of 
 inner perception. This is, with Herbart, as his examples 
 prove, almost without exception, congruent with inner per- 
 ception or self-observation. For he sees one of the chief 
 objects of apperception in this, that it enables us to notice 
 our own inner conditions, so that affections and passions 
 may not surprise us, or lead us to hasty actions, but 
 empower us to make a strict moral criticism of self. 
 
 Hence it is necessary to know the conditions under which 
 such apperception can take place securely and successfully.
 
 258 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 Physiological checks and irritable temperament are not 
 favorable to apperception. Perceptions which are to be ap- 
 perceived must be neither too new, nor too strange ; neither 
 too weak, nor too volatile. The new percept must be met 
 by a sufficient number of apperceiving ideas, that is, such as 
 offer enough points of contact with the new, and are sufficiently 
 strong, and cross the threshold of consciousness at the 
 proper time. Above all, the apperceiving notions cannot be 
 raw, chaotic, or only loosely connected masses, but must be 
 well perfected series of ideas. Especially the ideas ruling 
 them, namely, judgments and maxims, possess a strong 
 apperceiving power. The most general ideas are called 
 categories by Herbart. He distinguishes categories of 
 outer apperception, which serve in the acquisition of outer 
 observation, and categories of inner apperception, with the 
 aid of which we understand the states of our own soul, and 
 those of others. The former categories refer to objects of 
 the outer world, the latter to what happens in our own con- 
 sciousness. The categories of outer apperception are the 
 well known general notions of Kant ; those of the inner de- 
 signate either feeling or knowledge, either volition or action. 
 Speaking, especially conversation, exercises a prominent 
 influence upon their development and application. In con- 
 versation we are occupied with what is absent and past, not 
 with observation or perception, but with ideas (the residuum 
 or resultant of observations) . The burden of immediate, sen- 
 suous presence is thereby removed, a burden which oppresses 
 the animal continually. Conversation induces man to pre- 
 serve inner states in his memory longer and to recall them 
 oftener by occupying the mind with things past and absent. 
 A consequence of this is, that the older ideas can enter into 
 new combinations ; and it is through these combinations that 
 they are turned into very much stronger powers. Speaking
 
 HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF APPERCEPTION. 259 
 
 is labor. The entire thought to be expressed must constantly 
 hover before the speaker, and apperceive to the speaker 
 the different words with which the thought is to be clothed 
 before they are uttered. When the speech is ended, the 
 same happens with the series of words or sentences : It 
 is caught up, as it were, and apperceived by that mass of 
 ideas to which it corresponds. Thus through conversation 
 arises a systematic combination and fusion of notions to 
 ruling ideas, which, as categories, act apperceivingly upon 
 the objects of experience. The categories of inner apper- 
 ception especially enable man to observe and distinguish 
 what takes place in himself or others. While thus they 
 bring about a consciousness of the inner world, they contri- 
 bute essentially to the development of a purer and more dis- 
 tinct concept of the ego. 
 
 It is Herbart's merit to have defined the various processes 
 in the act of apperceiving, and thus to have given the idea 
 of apperception a greater distinctness. The supposition of 
 Leibnitz, that apperception might be dependent upon condi- 
 tions of the soul already existing, had not been noticed 
 further by Kant ; since the subject of transcendental apper- 
 ception, the pure ego, was to be taken as the emptiest of all 
 concepts, the empirical contents of the soul were not con- 
 sidered sufficiently in his theory. As Herbart took up again 
 that thought of Leibnitz and searched for the conditions of 
 apperception, he recognized and emphasized, first, the im- 
 portance of that residue of ideas acquired in the course of 
 life, that is, its importance for the acquisition of new impres- 
 sions and experiences. Since Herbart's investigation, it is 
 taken for a fact, that our outer and inner perceptions, without 
 exception, take place with the assistance of older related ideas, 
 the contents of which are determinative for the new perception. 
 With that, the definition of apperception as a, resultant of
 
 260 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 gradual development of the mind is given. For if appercep- 
 tion is absolutely dependent upon the nature of the store of 
 ideas acquired ; if man apperceives correctly or incorrectly, 
 superficially or thoroughly, in harmony with the contents and 
 order of the scries of ideas dominating his mind, the strength 
 and the extent of his apperception grow with the increase and 
 perfection of those groups of thought. It is entirely out of 
 the question to consider spontaneous activity of the mind, t. 
 e., actions independent of empirical contents and not being 
 capable of development. Herbart refutes such an assumption 
 directly: "Apperception, or inner perception, takes place 
 only when the conditions allow it. There is no room what- 
 ever for the lawless play of transcendental freedom." 
 
 However, in his polemic against the supposition of an 
 inborn faculty of apperception, he seems to overlook that the 
 process of mental acquisition does not only set combinations 
 of ideas into motion, but that to its successful termination 
 certain emotional conditions and acts of volition must 
 contribute. When, for instance, he speaks of ascending 
 apperceived ideas as being guided or checked in their motions 
 by more powerful masses of thought, it would seem more 
 reasonable to attribute to volition this interference with the 
 series of concepts. In active apperception, awakened by 
 definite feelings that are coupled with the contents of con- 
 cepts, volition calls up assistance which, without it, might 
 come too late ; it accelerates the arching and pointing of the 
 thought by narrowing the circle of ideas that have been 
 preserved in consciousness. Without activity of emotion 
 and volition no strong apperception seems to take place a 
 fact which may have given rise to the appearance of complete 
 spontaneity of the process in the sense of Kant. 
 
 Herbart's assertion, that apperception conforms exclusively 
 to older concepts which are superior in strength to the new
 
 HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF APPERCEPTION. 261 
 
 one, has found opposition. Especially is it Staude, 1 who 
 points out the precarious consequences of so narrow a view. 
 It certainly was not Herbart who underrated the formative 
 influences which at times, and under certain circumstances, a 
 new perception may exercise upon older apperceiving groups 
 of thought. When, for instance, he says that certain per- 
 ceptions could cause a decomposition and new formation of 
 ideas, or a correction of firmly rooted combinations of ideas ; 
 when he emphasizes the importance of conversation for the 
 systematic connection and solidification of ideas through 
 'apperception, we may take this as evidence of his not under- 
 rating the importance of the apperceived ideas. This some- 
 what narrow definition of the law of apperception seems 
 to have its foundation in the confusion of two ideas. Her- 
 bart, as a rule, does not distinguish, as we have seen, the ap- 
 perception of inner perception from self-observation (the inner 
 sense) . Such a confusion is the result of the double signifi- 
 cance which has always been attributed to the idea of inner 
 perception. We understand by that, as is well known, ob- 
 jective representation of absent things or events by the aid 
 of reproductive imagination, as well as perception of inner 
 
 1 He says: " If this law alone were determinative, every human being 
 would have acquired a finished and perfect development, and the question, 
 how he arrived at this degree of perfection, would remain unanswered. 
 For everything that may be offered to his soul by inner or outer per- 
 ception would simply be fitted into the contents of the soul already 
 existing, and become organically connected with it in that changed form, 
 without being able to do more than merely strengthen these contents. 
 But the intellectual education of man consists only to a small extent 
 in confirming the finished contents of the soul already existing, and much 
 more in providing it with new cognitions. Hence, in order to facilitate 
 a real progress in man, the younger percept must, abandoning its 
 exclusively passive role, be able to act upon the older ones ; and, at times 
 an entirely (?) new concept must be able to spring up in the soul which 
 previously could be found neither over nor under the threshold of con- 
 sciousness" ("Wundt's rhilos. Studien, p. 1GG).
 
 262 APPERCKPTION. 
 
 conditions, i. e., self-observation. There, it is becoming 
 conscious of the thing perceived ; here, of the act of perceiv- 
 ing: there, it is a perceiving of facts of outer and inner ex- 
 perience ; here, it is a perceiving of purely inner states. 
 The activity of the one kind of inner perception can chanir. 
 to that of the other kind without difficulty. As Ilerbart 
 directed his attention to the apperception of inner perception, 
 that is, the acquisition of reproduced ideas, he seems to have 
 been led unconsciously to the related theme of self-observa- 
 tion by the empirical material offered. His examples of inner 
 apperception have almost all reference to cases in which' 
 one's inner conditions or actions, affections, passions, outer 
 conduct, etc., are subjected to self-judgment. A man ex- 
 amines an idea with regard to its value, recognizes and 
 governs himself in his affections, and measures his actions 
 by the standard of his maxims ; while a child having no 
 principles, or a poet in the condition of enthusiasm, cannot 
 apperceive his thoughts and actions. In cases of mental ac- 
 quisition, it is tine, apperception and self-observation are 
 always intertwined, since man through ethical ideas and 
 judgments apperceives ideas which concern his own volition 
 and action. Hence the erroneous supposition lies near, that 
 things which are given simultaneously must also belong to- 
 gether logically, t. e. , that self-observation accompanies 
 apperception not only in some cases, but always. But self- 
 observation presupposes a strong superior mass of thought 
 which comes to meet the new perception in order to assimilate 
 it. From this Herbart derived the general fact, that inner 
 apperception conforms to older, deeply-rooted concepts. 
 He never asserted the same of outer apperception, and cer- 
 tainly never intended to do so. 
 
 Though after what has been said, it is clear that Herbart's 
 theory of apperception needs correction and completion in
 
 HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF APPERCEPTION. 263 
 
 several points, on the other hand there can be no doubt that 
 it is very well capable of such correction and perfection. 
 A stronger emphasis upon the acts of emotion and volition in 
 the process of apperception and their relation to the ego, for 
 instance, might as little contradict its essence as a sharper 
 distinction between the idea of intentional inner observation 
 and that of apperception would. That which distinguishes 
 advantageously Herbart's view from the views of Leibnitz 
 and Kant, is its far-reaching applicability and practical 
 importance in the field of empirical facts. More than one 
 chapter of psychology has found a much desired lucidity 
 through it ; namely, not only the lower processes of cognition 
 "as they take place in common life," but also the higher 
 mental activities are made clear by means of Herbart's 
 views of apperception. 
 
 Most psychologists of the Herbartian school have treated 
 the problem of apperception in a similar manner. We 
 mention only Drobisch, Schilling, Volkmaun, Striimpell, 
 Zimmermann, Lindner, Drbal. To Volkmann belongs the 
 merit of having been the first who strictly separated the 
 ideas of apperception and self-observation. The idea of 
 apperception has since Herbart fouud the most fruitful ap- 
 plication in pedagogics through Ziller. His explanation of 
 " acquisitive attention " casts a brighter light over the condi- 
 tions and course of the process of learning, and over 
 didactic maxims resulting therefrom. 
 
 A further development of Herbart's theory of apperception 
 has been attempted by Lazarus aud Steiiithal, particularly 
 from the standpoint of the philosophy of language. 
 
 I). The Idea of Apperception with Lazarus. 
 
 As in every material or mental activity, so in the process 
 of apperception, two processes must be distinguished : that
 
 264 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 of action and that of reaction. Every reaction is determined 
 on the one side by the nature of the action upon which it reacts ; 
 on the other side by nature itself, that is, by the original or 
 acquired nature of the reacting being. Thus every percep- 
 tion must be dependent upon the nature of the stimulating 
 object, and upon the nature of the soul as a perceiving being. 
 But the soul may react, yielding a sense-impression in two 
 ways : first, according to (by virtue of) its original nature, 
 then according to (by virtue of) the nature acquired by its 
 previous activity. In the former case the result is a percep- 
 tion ; in the latter, an apperception. Both are always found 
 together in the process of perceiving ; they may be distin- 
 guished as to content, but not as to time. Every perception 
 is also an apperception, that is, a reaction of the soul, filled, 
 more or less, with the contents of former processes. The 
 soul, as a sensient being, perceives according to its original 
 nature, while at the same time it apperceives according to the 
 elements acquired through earlier actions. An apperception 
 is not added to complete a perception, but perception is 
 formed under the assisting and essentially determining 
 influence of apperception. 
 
 Hence, we complete, correct and sharpen the sensations, 
 and add, in perceiving outer objects, by means of appercep- 
 tion, what is not given through the senses. In delusions of 
 the senses and in illusions we meet the secret activity of 
 apperception. 
 
 But apperception is of particular importance for the 
 linguistic development of the individual as well as of entire 
 nations. The creation of language took place with the 
 continual assistance of apperception. At the beginning, 
 man was without language, subject to the irritating impres- 
 sions of the outer world, responding to them only with 
 emotions. But the reactions of his soul against the sensual
 
 HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF APPERCEPTION. 265 
 
 impressions, especially when excitation of his feelings was 
 coupled with them, increased to reflex-movements, that is, to 
 sounds, which, then, were expressions of sense-perceptions 
 that gave rise to emotions. In this process of sound- 
 generation is expressed a tendency to equalize the force of 
 impression by expression ; to relieve, as it were, the soul as 
 well as the organism of the mass of impressions received. 
 The sound expressed in consequence of an outer impression 
 was perceived internally and united with the idea of the 
 object perceived into a complex formation ; that is, into a 
 unity of impression and expression. When a sound created 
 by the same man, or other men, repeatedly returned, it was 
 understood and interpreted, that is to say, it awakened with 
 the aid of a reproduction of sound a representation of the 
 thing ; the sound became a linguistic utterance ; perception 
 became apperception. 
 
 Thus it happened that in the first or pathognomonic step of 
 linguistic development with interjections or exclamations of 
 emotion ; thus also in the second or bnomato-poetic (name- 
 creating) step witli expressions of sound-imitation, that 
 which man himself had put into these sounds at their 
 creation, he now hears again and, apperceiviug, recognizes. 
 
 More clearly than in the creation of this so-called outer 
 form of language is noticeable the activity of the acquired 
 contents of the soul in another kind of language formation. 
 When, for instance, the Greeks and Romans designated the 
 ox (Rind) "/?otv," ios, they evidently meant to say "the 
 boo-makiug " animal ; that is, they saw the whole animal in 
 this single quality, in the tone of its voice. Among all the 
 different kinds of sense-perception which combined to create 
 the idea of that animal, this one is most prominent ; its 
 name therefore was transferred to the entire concept. Thus 
 it came about that a word designates the whole thing, whose
 
 266 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 name in reality expresses only one quality. Whenever the 
 concept ox was connected with that word, apperception of a 
 new sensation through an older, linguistically fixed one, took 
 place. This one-sided relation to man of a many-sided 
 object fixed by language, Lazarus calls the inner form of 
 language. This inner form of language made itself felt 
 most strongly in the third step of language formation, which 
 may be called the characterizing step. At this step no new 
 elements of language (word-roots and root-words) were 
 generated, but men endeavored to make new forms with the 
 store of words obtained, and to fit all new perceptions 
 into older related groups and forms. Here the apperceiving 
 strength of the existing store of language proved most 
 effective and fruitful. In the same way in which, formerly, 
 in entire nations the creation of language proceeded, the 
 individual of to-day has to proceed in learning a language. 
 Even the child of to-day has to create language like man in 
 prehistoric ages, self-actively, according to the laws of 
 apperception. 
 
 The course of apperception naturally is dependent upon 
 the nature of apperceived or apperceiving ideas and those 
 accompanying them. The subject of apperception, especially, 
 may consist of separate, simple, or complex ideas, as well as 
 of forms of thought and contents of thought. The latter 
 arise through solidification of concepts ; as, for instance, 
 when the essential characteristics of numerous related objects 
 are combined into one idea ; or the contents of an essay into 
 a logical outline ; or the separate features, events and actions 
 of a historical person in a brief but complete characteriza- 
 tion. Ideas and laws, methods of thinking and working, 
 maxims of action, rules of art, are, so to speak, the psychical 
 organs, through which the individual thing that has reference 
 to 4hem is apperceived.
 
 HISTOKY OF THE IDEA OF APPERCEPTION. 267 
 
 However, they act not only through their contents, but just 
 as much through the accompanying conditions of the soul. 
 Not only that takes hold of a new impression which, in a 
 moment of mental acquisition, fills consciousness, but there 
 are also unconscious elements active in the process of apper- 
 ception which, with the contents of consciousness, form one 
 group or series. This happens especially where, instead of 
 the contents of a group of thoughts, only an idea representing 
 it acts apperceivingly in consciousness. In the act of 
 thinking, in art work, or inventing, the conscious action of 
 the mind is constantly assisted and determined by reverber- 
 ating unconscious ideas. Indeed, to the latter may even be 
 credited the real creation, the thinking, finding, establishing. 
 Only the intention of creating and the resolution to do so, on 
 the one side, and the complete success on the other, become 
 distinct in consciousness. The real process of apperception, 
 or the creation of the new formations takes place uncon- 
 sciously. 
 
 Finally it must be remembered that, both for form and 
 course of apperception, the feelings and tendencies which 
 move the soul are of importance. Our wishes and cares, our 
 affections and needs, our longings and desires, guide and 
 determine our perception of things and events. In the 
 grandest creations of the human mind, the soul's mood 
 proves to be the most influential force for the direction and 
 order of apperception. 
 
 The idea of apperception has experienced an essential 
 addition through Lazarus. With Herbart it was confined 
 chiefly to such cases in which the acquisition of the new is 
 preceded by excitation of the circle of thought, that is, a 
 contemplative, lingering observation, an arching and pointing 
 of concepts; but more exact investigation showed that 
 apperception can take place even without such intentional
 
 268 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 guidance of the movements of ideas. Not only in the 
 moment of continuous reflection and profound thought, but 
 also in the seemingly simplest processes of intellectual life, 
 we are apperceivingly active. Hence, generally speaking, 
 apperception may be considered as a reaction of the soul 
 (filled with contents) against outer and inner perception. 
 
 In emphatically calling attention to the importance of 
 unconscious ideas, as well as to that of feelings and af- 
 fections, words and volition, for the process of appercep- 
 tion, Lazarus offers a valuable addition to Herbart's vie^v. 
 For the forces that, in the act of apperceiving, awaken and 
 guide the masses of ideas are the secret powers of the 
 emotional soul (Gemiith) ; to understand them means to 
 recognize the deepest motives and causes of apperception. 
 
 E. The Idea of Apperception with Sleinthal. 
 
 Every perception is a process performed between two 
 psychical factors or elemetits. That which is first given is 
 the primary stimulation of the mind, a weak, imperfect 
 product, caused by sense-action ; a product in which sub- 
 jective and objective things are not yet separated, and which 
 gives no cognition of the exterior object that caused the 
 excitation. Hence it cannot be said to be either a sensation 
 or a perception. A second more important element is com- 
 bined with it, namely, a memory-image of the same, or a 
 similar object of observation. This aids in interpreting and 
 understanding the primary action of the soul, by being fused 
 with it. An idea, or a group of ideas already in possession 
 of the mind, apperceives the new impression. From the 
 combination of both arises a product of cognition, perception. 
 
 It is not the apperceptive group of ideas that brings a per- 
 ception to consciousness, for either may, or may not, have 
 the favor of consciousness. Apperception is not added to a
 
 HISTORY 0V THE IDEA OF APPERCEPTION. 269 
 
 perception, but the latter is the product of the former; it is 
 that which is perceived. 
 
 As in the origin of the simplest perceptions, so in the for- 
 mation and repetition of complex ideas, concepts and no- 
 tions, and in the creation of the most ingenious idea, ap- 
 perception is active. In every case, however, it is the 
 moving of two masses of perceptions toward each other for 
 the purpose of generating a cognition ; it is the essence of 
 spiritual processes upon which cognition is invariably based. 
 It is supported invariably by elementary psychical processes ; 
 but it includes them in special combinations. For instance, 
 we have seen that it depends upon fusion ; but the lat- 
 ter idea does not by any means contain all the character- 
 istics which we find in the idea of apperception. If, for 
 instance, we recognize a beloved person, the sense-impres- 
 sion is apperceived by a long chain of ideas, feelings and 
 desires arising in the memory. It is thereby perfected and 
 formed into a definite object. Recognition does not merely 
 mean to be conscious that the person present is the one 
 known or loved by us, but the entire condition of our mind 
 at the moment of seeing the person again after a long 
 absence is what we coldly call "recognition." It is not 
 a theoretical act, not merely cognition, which we exercise, 
 but an action of life, a function of our being. Such apper- 
 ception shows us that we are incapable of defining exactly 
 in every case all the factors active in the process of apper- 
 ception; hence it follows, that to a certain degree the defini- 
 tion of apperception must forever remain obscure. 
 
 Of the masses of ideas which, for the purpose of genera- 
 ting cognitions, move toward each other, the one may be 
 called the subject, the other the object of apperception. A 
 glance at the psychological relation existing between them 
 may make the distinction clearer.
 
 270 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 In most cases the subject of apperception consists of 
 older ideas already existing, that is, the soul brings to the 
 process of apperception an " a priori" element, which, as 
 the active and more powerful agent, determines the direc- 
 tion and success of the entire process. But what gives it 
 this superiority over the newly acquired perception? It is 
 its strong sensibility, the faculty of returning to conscious- 
 ness easily, and forming new connections with other ideas. 
 Such sensibility and mobility are, as a rule, qualities of 
 rich, well-articulated groups that are reproduced regularly, 
 series of concepts which, for instance, refer to one's profes- 
 sion, one's mode of life, one's every-day occupation. Every 
 person has one or more such groups that exercise an espe- 
 cially strong power of apperception and which, therefore, 
 are called the " ruling ideas." 
 
 However, their efficiency is not exclusive : we apperceive 
 often enough with weaker or even with the weakest ideas, if 
 they are most congruent with the impression received. We 
 may therefore say in general : That group always apper- 
 ceives which, either absolutely or only for the special case, 
 proves the most powerful. A chief condition of the rela- 
 tive power of the ideas is interest, that is, the readiness 
 of a group of ideas for apperceiving activity, which readi- 
 ness depends upon the pleasure, felt or expected, in the 
 application of its power. Interest awakens attention, that 
 is, willingness causes readiness for mental acquisition. 
 But it should not be left unnoticed that unconscious, sym- 
 pathetic ideas, as well as moods which govern the mind at 
 the moment, may aid a group of ideas in its apperceiving 
 power. 
 
 If thus in general the " a priori" element is felt to be 
 the stronger in apperception, in certain cases it may be that 
 a new impression itself transforms and enriches our apper-
 
 HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF APPERCEPTION. 271 
 
 ceiving groups during the process of apperception. Hence, 
 under certain conditions the object of apperception may 
 be the more powerful element which determines both direc- 
 tion and result of mental acquisition. 
 
 Like the psychological relation of the two factors, so the 
 logical relation may be reviewed. The following kinds of 
 apperception may be distinguished. 
 
 1. If object and subject of apperception are perfectly 
 alike, that is, if the impression corresponds to a picture in 
 the memory, both will be fused, not only with reference to 
 the cognition, but also with reference to the conditions of 
 the mind under which the process takes place. This is iden- 
 tifying apperception. 
 
 2. While at times individual things are apperceived by 
 individual ideas, at other times the individual is acquired 
 by the general, the idea of a single being by the idea of 
 the species, the idea of the species by the class, order, and so 
 on. This classifying or subsuming apperception embraces 
 all classifying and arranging, all proving and inferring, all 
 aesthetic and ethical judgment. 
 
 3. Often a definite fact may be classified among certain 
 ideas when one is incapable of harmonizing it with related 
 groups of thoughts that are the seat of lively emotions and 
 desires. When, for instance, a person dies whom we have 
 loved, we understand the event well enough ; but we cannot 
 reconcile ourselves with it, cannot bring it into harmony 
 with the condition of the soul ; that is, we cannot apperceive 
 it. When at last an adjustment takes place between the 
 opposing groups of ideas, it is not a case of subordination 
 or superiority, but a case of co-ordination of ideas, that is, the 
 proper relation is found between co-ordinate ideas or such 
 as belong to different classes. This is the object of harmo- 
 nizing apperception.
 
 272 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 4. The creative or formative apperception, finally, is 
 found in all those combinations on which the progress of 
 science is based, in the creations of our poets and artists, in 
 the thinking process of induction and deduction, in the 
 guessing of riddles, but also in illusions and hallucinations. 
 There is one circumstance which is peculiarly its own, 
 namely, that in every case it first creates the apperceiving 
 factor. 
 
 Steinthal, like Lazarus, endeavored to give the idea of 
 apperception a new setting. But while placing all activity 
 of the discerning soul under the spacious roof of his formula, 
 he includes psychological processes in it which ought not to 
 be placed at par with the peculiar action of mental acquisi- 
 tion, although they, like apperception, serve in effecting 
 cognition. On the other hand, one misses in his definition 
 certain characteristics which he himself attributes to apper- 
 ception as essentials : namely, that apperception is more 
 than a mere fusion of ideas with ideas or of percepts with 
 concepts, and that in the motion of masses of ideas lively 
 emotions and affections participate, are not stated in the 
 definition ; it leaves us also in the dark as to how the masses 
 of ideas moving to meet each other go about generating 
 cognition. Evidently, then, the widening of the idea of 
 apperception has injured its distinctness and clearness. 
 
 F. Apperception Defined by Modern Non-Herbartian 
 Psychologists. 
 
 In the works of modern psychologists outside the Herbar- 
 tian school we meet the term " apperception " but rarely. 
 But the process designated by the term is not unknown 
 to them. Following Herbart, almost unanimously they 
 take it to be a fusion of similar ideas. Thus Beneke's 
 * ' traces " are what remain of psychical processes that
 
 HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF APPERCEPTION. 273 
 
 have vanished from consciousness, and these traces serve in 
 securing the acquisition of new perceptions. 
 
 In a similar manner Theo. Waitz speaks of ." residua," 
 remainders, or after-effects, of perceptions in the mind, 
 " by which all subsequent conditions of the mind are modi- 
 fied." In earliest childhood it is, as he thinks, a general 
 feeling, that is, "a confused mass caused by simultaneous- 
 ness of different impressions, which apperceives all separate 
 specific sense impressions." In later years "no pure and 
 isolated perception can take place, because the mind is 
 always preoccupied by a great number of remainders of 
 previous processes," with which the new perception has " to 
 make terms." 
 
 Dittes defines apperception as a sense-action or percep- 
 tion, which arises through the addition of formations already 
 existing in the mind to new impressions or perceptions. 
 
 Erdmann distinguishes also perception and apperception, 
 in so far as he calls the " acquisitive perceiving " Anschauen, 
 in contradistinction to mere seeing, or perceiving. That 
 which is totally strange is only an object ; this is perceived, 
 not " angeschant." In an " Anschawing," however, that 
 which is objectively perceived contains contributions from 
 the mind itself. 
 
 Imm. Herm. Fichte distinguishes three factors in the 
 process of perception: (1) sensation, (2) distinguishing 
 and combining of sensations, and (3) their recognition. 
 In this last named action, by which " a single perception is 
 put into relation to a common picture already existing, and 
 thus recognized," we find apperception again. It is that 
 action which fits individual percepts into related groups of 
 concepts. 
 
 According to Lotze, there are conscious sensations the 
 contents of which are lost in the hasty change of the mind's
 
 274 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 states, because no definite concept of our own life comes to 
 meet it with which it might associate, and in whose boun- 
 daries it might unalterably take its proper place. Such a 
 sensation is a perception, in contradistinction to apperception, 
 by means of which we become conscious of sense-action. 
 "We apperceive those impressions which we bring into com- 
 prehensible connection with our empirical ego, and whose 
 relation to former events, as well as their value for the 
 further development of our personality, we feel and treasure 
 up for subsequent remembrance." The extent and com- 
 pleteness which the idea of self possesses every moment in 
 the course of our thoughts, determines the indefinite variety 
 of degrees of perfection with which a perception is received 
 in consciousness, ?'. e., with which it is apperceived. " For 
 the concept of the ego that comes to meet it is not every- 
 where the same ; often poor and without content it combines 
 the new impression with but few, and perhaps, indifferent 
 features of our own being; the impression is not recognized 
 in the intellectual value it possesses for the entirety of our 
 life. The most significant perceptions are often lost in con- 
 sequence of the condition of our temperament at the moment, 
 while at other times their importance is instantly noticed. 
 If this variability of perception were confined to the theo- 
 retical contents of the impressions, a later reproduction 
 under more favorable circumstances might adjust the want 
 in the first impression ; but this variability becomes fatal, 
 inasmuch as it is extended over resolutions and actions 
 (Medical Psychology, p. 504). 
 
 From Leibnitz's thought, as we have seen, two trends have 
 issued in the history of the idea of apperception. The view 
 represented by Kant considers the process of apperception 
 as the expression of an inborn spontaneous activity, while 
 the Herbartian school emphasizes more the effects of accumu-
 
 HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF APPERCEPTION. 275 
 
 lated contents of the soul, acquired during the course of 
 mental development. While the latter school of philosophers 
 is particularly engaged in extending and applying the idea of 
 apperception, Kant's attempt to base all apperception upon 
 pure self-consciousness remained isolated. Only in recent 
 years the thought of a spontaneous activity of apperception 
 
 with the omission of Kant's metaphysical presuppositions 
 
 has been taken up again and developed into an indepen- 
 dent theory of apperception. The last chapter of our his- 
 tory shall be devoted to it. 
 
 G. Wundt's Theory of Apperception. 
 
 The ideas which at a given moment exist in consciousness 
 differ with regard to their distinctness. The majority of 
 them, less distinct, recede behind ideas, or conceiving ele- 
 ments, that are distinguished by special clearness. This 
 fact has been compared with the similar phenomenon which 
 is observed in the act of seeing. The pictures of outer ob- 
 jects which are formed on the retina are most distinct at the 
 point called the focus ; their clearness diminishes more and 
 more, the farther away they are from that point. Now 
 taking consciousness, figuratively speaking, as an inner see- 
 ing, it may be said that all concepts present at one moment 
 are within the field of vision (Blickfehl) of consciousness, 
 while only one is in the focus (Hlickjntnkt) of consciousness. 
 The entrance of an image into the field of vision is defined 
 as perception ; its entrance into the focus of vision as ap- 
 perception. 
 
 Hence, apperception is shown in the high degree of clear- 
 ness acquired by a concept or image ; but at the same time 
 a definite psychical action which causes this result is neces- 
 sary : namely, this the image, being present with others in 
 consciousness as a percept, is seized upon and brought to
 
 276 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 greater clearness by attention. But attention is nothing 
 else than an act of the will. For the will must be defined 
 as a conceiving activity in consciousness, which activity in 
 the course of our inner states acts determinatively, and calls 
 forth corresponding outer movements. Hence, apperception 
 is an act of volition, a determination of the will upon the 
 ideas. No apperception without activity of the will ! And 
 it is always the one will which is expressed in all forms of 
 apperception. "Apperception is the activity of our will in 
 the realm of our ideas, and only in this activity do we our- 
 selves feel the unity of our volition." Therefore Wundt 
 thinks, with Leibnitz and Kant, that apperception is the 
 foundation of our self-consciousness. 
 
 It is plain, then, that so fundamental a psychical function 
 must exercise a far-reaching control in the realm of thought. 
 Without apperception our concepts would resemble scattered 
 members wanting a unifying element; they would be in- 
 capable of entering into association with one another. For 
 it is an erroneous supposition that percepts and concepts 
 are combined by means of their contents, or their inner and 
 outer relations. That which combines them is apperception. 
 Indeed, apperception raises them to the rank of inner func- 
 tions. Apperception is felt directly as an inner activity 
 " from which we transfer the character of inner actions 
 upon the contents of that which is apperceived. The ideas 
 themselves appear to us as inner actions, although we re- 
 main conscious of the fact that this character can be attrib- 
 uted only to their apperception." With reference to this 
 fact Wundt calls apperception briefly "conceiving activity." 
 It is, therefore, both an action of production (conception) 
 and volition (since, according to Wundt, feeling is to be 
 traced back to volition), or the sum and substance of an 
 inner activity. So long as apperception is active in the
 
 HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF APPERCEPTION. 277 
 
 field of associative combinations of ideas, so long as it con- 
 tributes to the formation of elementary mental structures, 
 i. e., complexions and complications, groups and series of 
 ideas, its character as an action of volition does not appear. 
 Here, ideas are apperceivingly combined without one's be- 
 coming conscious of the assistance of the will. "Wundt at- 
 tributes this to the fact that here the will is determined 
 univocally (eindeutiy) by perceptions entering conscious- 
 ness, that is to say, one perception is so distinguished by 
 intensity, or its emotional tone, that apperception of others 
 is quite out of the question. Hence, we think that we are 
 guided by outer influences, or by our reproductions and not 
 by our will. We have here a form of apperception which 
 we may call passive apperception. 
 
 It is different in that action of apperception which on the 
 basis of associative combination of concepts proceeds to the 
 formation of ideas, judgments and conclusions. This action 
 moves chiefly in the regions of thought and imagination. 
 Here, apperception is not guided univocally by ideas that 
 are raised by association, but several ideas are at its dis- 
 posal among which it can choose. And "it chooses the 
 proper ones by means of an activity which is determined 
 causally by the entire historical development of conscious- 
 ness." In this action we become distinctly conscious of 
 apperception as an inner action, or will. It is therefore 
 called active apperception. 
 
 We become conscious of the process of apperception 
 chiefly through the sensation of tension which accompanies 
 it, especially in a case of reflection, or a case of expecta- 
 tion. This leads us to the physiological processes connected 
 with it. According to the thorough and most interesting 
 investigations of Wundt, the following physiological func-
 
 278 APPERCEPTION. 
 
 tions are to be distinguished in the apperception of an ex- 
 pected sense-impression : 
 
 1. Transmission of the sensory excitation from the 
 sense-organ to the brain. 
 
 2. Excitation of the sensory centers (at the moment of 
 psychical reaction, entrance of the sensation into the field of 
 vision of consciousness = perception) . 
 
 3. Transmission of the sensory excitation to the apper- 
 ception centers, ?'. e., the fore part of the cerebrum; return 
 of the excitation to the sensory-centers whereby a strength- 
 ening of the percept is caused, and to the region of volun- 
 tary muscles whereby a tension of certain muscles is occa- 
 sioned (entrance of the percept into the focus of conscious- 
 ness = apperception). 
 
 It is particularly this tension of muscles which in cases of 
 intense apperception causes a feeling of exertion. When 
 paying attention to outer sense-impressions a tension is no- 
 ticed in the respective sense-organ (eye, ear) . While trying 
 to recollect certain memory-images, this feeling of tension 
 recedes to those parts of the head surrounding the brain. 
 In both cases it is a feeling of iuervation of the muscles 
 caused by a real tension, and is therefore accompanied by 
 sensations of touch. 
 
 The theory of Wundt, sketched in the foregoing lines, ex- 
 pressly claims the merit of having proved the spontaneity of 
 apperception, and having in opposition to Herbart, empha- 
 sized it anew. It connects with a thought of Leibnitz's and 
 Kant's theory without clinging to it in its crude form. For 
 while Leibnitz's "soul-monad" creates " sna sponte" its 
 ideas independently of events and phenomena of the outer 
 world ; and while Kant's activity of apperception is only in- 
 duced by outer and inner experience, but not determined in 
 its contents, Wuudt shows that the will appears in the pro-
 
 HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF APPERCEPTION. 279 
 
 cess of apperception in accordance with certain motives 
 which determine its direction. He therefore asserts no ab- 
 solute, but merely a relative spontaneity of the will. At 
 any rate, all apperception is traced back to its spontaneous 
 activity. Numerous facts seem to speak in favor of this 
 supposition. In all cases where mental acquisition takes 
 place only after surmounting special difficulties since a 
 thinking, lingering reflection and a wavering between dif- 
 ferent series of reproduction precede it there the action of 
 the will regulating, as it were, the course of perceptions, can 
 be demonstrated. And the farther the intellectual develop- 
 ment of man progresses, the more important becomes the 
 function of those apperceptions that are brought about by 
 the assistance, and under the guidance, of the will.
 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 "Thou that teachest another, teachest thou rot thyself?" 
 
 tJ^OR American Schools and American Scholarship there is no 
 more healthful sign than the newly-awakened interest of teach- 
 ers in all that pertains to successful work and personal culture. At 
 the outset of this great and wide-spread movement in favor of better 
 methods and worthier results, it was but natural that the practical side 
 of education should be treated out of all proportion, while its theoreti- 
 cal and historical aspects should be somewhat overlooked. But if 
 education is to become a science and teaching to be practised as an 
 art, one means to this end is to gather and examine what has been 
 done by those who have been engaged therein, and whose position and 
 success have given them a right to be heard. Another and not less 
 potent means is, to gain a clear comprehension of the psychological 
 basis of the teacher's work, and a familiar acquaintance with the 
 methods which rest upon correct psychological principles. As con- 
 tributions of inestimable value to the history, the philosophy, and the 
 practice of education, we take pleasure in calling the attention of 
 teachers to our books on Education, mentioned in the following pages. 
 It is our purpose to add from time to time such books as have con- 
 tributed or may contribute so much toward the solution of educational 
 problems as to make them indispensable to every tree teacher's library. 
 
 The folloiving good words, and also the opinions quoted 
 under the several volumes, are an earnest of the appre- 
 ciation in which the enterprise is held : 
 
 Dr. Wm. T. Harris, Concord, Mass. : 
 I do not think that you have ever printed 
 a book on education that is not worthy 
 to go on any teacher's reading-list, and 
 the best list. (March 26, 1886.) 
 
 J. W. Stearns, Prof, of the Science 
 and Art of Teaching, Univ. of Wis. : 
 Allow me to say that the list of books 
 which you are publishing for .uc use of 
 
 teachers seems to me of exceptional ex- 
 cellence. I have watched the growth of 
 the list with increasing pleasure, and I 
 feel that you have done a service of great 
 value to teachers. (May a6, 1886.) 
 
 N. M. Butler, Pres. of New Yivk 
 City Coll. for Training of Ttachers : I 
 am greatly interested in your series of 
 pedagogical publications.
 
 104 
 
 EDUCATION; 
 
 Compayres History of Pedagogy. 
 
 Translated and Edited by W. H. PAYNE, Chancellor of the University of Nash- 
 ville and President of the Peabody Normal College ; with Introduction, Notes, 
 References, and an Index. Cloth. 618 pages. Retail price, $1.75. Special 
 price for class use. 
 
 IN one volume of moderate size the reader will find an interesting^ 
 instructive, and comprehensive account of all the greater move- 
 ments in the history of human thought as it bears on education. The 
 great need of the teacher is breadth of view, and an adequate survey 
 of the whole field of educational activity, and these wholesome and 
 necessary endowments can come only from a study of the history of 
 education. For this high purpose it is safe to say that there is no 
 other book in any language which has the excellences of Compayr^'s 
 History of Pedagogy. 
 
 W. T. Harris, U. S. Com'r of Edu- 
 cation, Washington : It Is indispensable 
 among histories of education. 
 
 Q. Stanley Hall, Pres. of Clark 
 Univ., Worcester, Mass. : It is the best 
 and most comprehensive universal history 
 of education in English. The translator 
 has added valuable notes. 
 
 Irwin Shepard, Pres. of State Nor- 
 mal School, Winona,Minn.: We adopted 
 immediately upon its publication, and are 
 now using it with great satisfaction in a 
 class of sixty members. Through the aid 
 of this book, the subject has assumed a 
 new interest and importance to all our 
 teachers and students. 
 
 Gabriel Campayre, Chambres des 
 Deputes, Paris : Votre traduction me 
 oarait excellente et je vous remercie des 
 soins que vous y avez mis. J'ai grand 
 olaisir i me relire dans votre langue, 
 d'autant que vous n'avez rien nlgligg 
 pour 1'impression matlrielle. 
 
 J. W. Stearns, Prof, of the Science 
 and Art of Teaching, Univ. of Wis. : It 
 will, I believe, serve to increase interest in 
 the history of educational thought and ex- 
 perience, an end greatly to be desired. 
 
 M. A. Newell, State Sufi, of Educa- 
 tion, Baltimore, Md.: It is a very valuable 
 addition to our pedagogic literature ; it is 
 as brief as the breadth of the subject would 
 allow, and is comprehensive and philo- 
 sophical. The notes and index added by 
 Professor Payne very much increase th 
 value of the work. 
 
 E. H. Russell, Prin. of State Normal 
 School, Worcester, Mass.: I say unhesi- 
 tatingly that it is a very valuable edition 
 to the list of first-rate books for teachers 
 I have put it into the hands of our senior 
 class, and have recommended it to our 
 graduates. 
 
 N. M. Butler, Prin. of N. Y. CoU. 
 for Training of Teachers: It should be ia 
 the hands of every teacher, every normal- 
 school student, and on the list of every 
 " reading circle." I predict for the book 
 the greatest success, for it deserves it. 
 
 E. E. Higbee, late State Suft.of Pub- 
 lic Instruction, Harrisburg, Penn. : I 
 hopeit may be introduced into all the nor- 
 mal schools of this State, and give a dig- 
 nified impetus to studies of such character, 
 so much needed and so valuable.
 
 EDUCATION: 
 
 105 
 
 Compayres Lectures on Pedagogy. 
 
 Translated and Edited by W. H. PAYNE, Chancellor of the University of Nash- 
 ville and President of the Peabody Normal College. Cloth. 500 pages. Retail 
 price, #1.75. Special price for class use. 
 
 ' I^HIS is a companion volume to the Author's HISTORY OF PEDA- 
 * GOGY and is characterized by the qualities that are so conspic- 
 uous in the earlier volume ; it is comprehensive, clear, accurate, and 
 is written with rare critical insight. To have an original and superior 
 mind elaborate a systematic theory of education out of the best his- 
 toric material accessible, and present as its complement a revised 
 series of methods, would be thought an invaluable service to the 
 teaching profession, but this is precisely what M. Compayre has 
 done in this charming volume. It is the most original and satisfac- 
 tory manual for teachers that has ever appeared in English. 
 
 Jas. MacAlister, Supt. of Public 
 Schools, Philadelphia, Pa. : I have known 
 the book ever since it appeared, and re- 
 gard it as the best work in existence on 
 the Theory and Practice of Education. 
 
 Thomas J. Morgan, recently Prin. 
 Slate Normal School, Providence, R. I. : 
 It seems to me the best book on the sub- 
 ject which has yet been published in 
 America. 
 
 H. B. Twitmeyer, Coll. of Northern 
 III., Dakota, III. : It is the best resume' I 
 have ever seen on the study and practice 
 of teaching. 
 
 Richard Edwards, Supt. Public 
 'nstruction, Springfield, III. : I value the 
 
 book very highly indeed, and think it will 
 have great effect in uplifting the profes- 
 sion of teachers in this country. 
 
 W. W. Parsons, Pres. Ind. State 
 Normal School: 1 pronounce it an excel- 
 lent popular treatise on the Science of 
 Education. I consider it a valuable addi- 
 tion to our professional literature. 
 
 Christian Union : Especially in- 
 genious is the chapter upon the education 
 of the attention; that, too, upon the cul- 
 ture of the memory is of great practical 
 value. We should like to put this work 
 into the hands of every instructor, whether 
 parent or teacher. 
 
 Psychology Applied to Education. 
 
 By GABRIEL COMPAYRE. Translated by WM. H. PAYNE, Chancellor of the 
 University of Nashville. Cloth. 225 pages. Retail price, 90 cents. 
 
 IN the statement of doctrine and application, this manual is profound 
 without being obscure, and simple without being commonplace. 
 There are thousands of teachers who have neither the taste nor the 
 leisure to master the details of educational science, nor even to read the 
 profounder treatises, but who are anxious to find a rational basis for 
 their art ; for such there is no book that can be commended so highly.
 
 EDUCATION. 107 
 
 Apperception . 
 
 A Monograph on Psychology and Pedagogy. By Dr. KARL LANCE. Trans* 
 lated by the following named members of the Herbart Club: Elmer E. Brown, 
 Charles I)e Garmo, Mrs. Eudora Hailmann, Florence Hall, George F. James, 
 L. R. Klemm, Ossian H. Lang, Herman T. Lukens, Charles A. McMurry, 
 Frank McMurry, Theo. B. Noss, Levi L. Seeley, Margaret K. Smith, and edited 
 by Charles De Garmo, President of Swarthmore College. Cloth. 279 pages. 
 Retail price, Ji.oo. 
 
 THIS is perhaps the most popular scientific monograph on education 
 that has appeared in Germany in recent times. It has the rare 
 merit of being at once thoroughly scientific and intensely interesting 
 and concrete. Not a little of its value arises from the fact that it 
 approaches the problems of education along the highway that teachers 
 must actually pass in order to solve them. Its standpoint is, in brief, 
 the living, developing mind of the child itself. Apperception is a 
 single word comprehending the whole complex of processes known as 
 mental assimilation. It is here considered in its original nature, and 
 in its application to instruction and moral training, both as regards the 
 developing child, its interests, powers, and mental stores, on the one 
 hand, and the selection, arrangement, and methodical treatment of 
 the subject-matter of instruction, on the other. The scientific value 
 of the volume is enhanced by a somewhat extended chapter on the 
 history of the term APPERCEPTION, found at the close of the book. 
 The prediction is not unwarranted that this unpretentious monograph 
 will awaken more universal interest and stimulate more educational 
 thoughts than any other single work that has been issued in the 
 United States during the last quarter of a century, for it ushers in a 
 new epoch in the popular study of education in this country, that of 
 scientific treatment enriched by a vast wealth of concrete, interesting 
 material. In it science has become popular treatment, and popular 
 treatment scientific exposition. 
 
 Edward T. Pierce. Prin. of Nor- 
 mal School, Los Angeles, CaL: I am 
 more than pleased with the book. It is a 
 fascinating book to a teacher who is 
 searching after truth. I shall not only 
 recommend it to teachers, but urge them 
 to get the book. (Nov. 25, 1893.) 
 
 L. R. Klemm, of tkt Bureau of Edu- 
 
 cation, Waihington, D. C.: There are few 
 educational books on the American mar- 
 ket that come up to this in usefulness. 
 It has qualities which will make it * 
 favorite text-book in Normal Schools and 
 other pedagogical institutions. The little 
 book will be hailed with delight, and justly 
 $o, by the great number of teachers. 
 
 (Aug. 23, 1893.)
 
 io8 EDUCATION. 
 
 Manual of Empirical Psychology. 
 
 An authorized translation from the German of Dr. G. A. LINDNER, by CHARLEI 
 DE GARMO, Ph.D., Professor of Modern Languages in State Normal Univei* 
 sity, 111. Cloth. 274 pages. Price by mail, Ji.io. Introduction price, $1.00. 
 
 THIS is the best Manual of Psychology ever prepared from the 
 Herbartian standpoint, which, briefly characterized, is the 
 standpoint of pedagogics. No other school of psychologists have 
 thrown so much light upon the solution of the problems arising in the 
 instruction and training of youth ; and no other author of this school 
 has been so successful as Lindner in compact yet comprehensive and 
 intelligible statement of psychological facts and principles. The book 
 is what its name indicates, a psychology arising from the given data 
 of experience ; yet there is no psychology in English which does so 
 much toward arousing an intelligent interest in the advanced depart- 
 ments of rational psychology and philosophy in general. 
 
 That an effective educational psychology must be based upon a 
 concrete experience, rather than upon the a priori forms of mind \\ 
 reasonably evident, but Lindner is more than a mere recorder of ex- 
 perience. He unfolds his subject as a true inductive science, never 
 losing sight of the organic development of mental life. This gives 
 him a great pedagogical significance. Again, he is always interesting. 
 His explanations are lucid, pointed, and self-consistent, while every 
 department of science and of experience has yielded its choicest facts 
 to enrich the contents of the book. 
 
 The work is especially recommended for normal schools, reading 
 circles, and higher institutions of learning. 
 
 G. Stanley Hall, Pres. of Clark 
 Univ., Worcester, Mass. : The practical 
 applicability of this stand-point and book 
 makes its merits. 
 
 G. Williamson Smith, Pres. of 
 Trinity Coll., Hartford, Conn. : It is an 
 original work, on well conceived principles 
 and carried on by methods of induction 
 approved by all. 
 
 F. Louis Soldan, Prin. St. Louis 
 Normal and high School: Lindner's 
 Psychology is one of the best works, if not 
 the best, of the vigorous school to which 
 he belongs. The translation is an im- 
 
 W. H. Councill, Prin. State Nor- 
 mal and Industrial School, Ala. : The 
 work possesses every merit necessary to 
 give it a permanent place among the high* 
 est order of text books. 
 
 G. S. Albee, Pres. State Normal 
 School, Oshkosh, Wis. : Only the most 
 original and realistic teachers have been 
 able to obtain results in class work which 
 lifted the study of psychology above con- 
 tempt. This key-note of the best and 
 most definitely true teaching appears upon 
 nearly every page of Lindner. The author 
 may congratulate himself that his Amerv 
 
 provement on the original i am editor was a clear- minded psychologist
 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 109 
 
 The Essentials of Method. 
 
 Revised Edition. A discussion of the essential forms of right method in teach- 
 ing by CHARLES DE GARMO. Ph. D., President of Swarthmore College. Cloth. 
 '33 P*S es > Retail price, 65 cents. Special price for class use. 
 
 THIS little volume is an initial work in the science of methods, no 
 attempt of its kind having previously been made in English. It 
 assumes, therefore, an importance and significance which are not 
 measured by its size or price. 
 
 It comprises three parts: i. The psychological basis. This con- 
 sists mostly of a discussion of the nature of the individual and the 
 general notion, and of the true nature of mental assimilation, or ap- 
 prehension : 2 . The necessary stages of rational methods as deter- 
 mined by the psychological basis. We have here an exposition of the 
 functions of observation, of generalization and of the application of 
 generalizations in fixing and utilizing knowledge ; 3. Practical illustra- 
 tions, showing how the teacher may consciously observe these stages 
 in his daily work in the school room. The Revised Edition gives both 
 a popular and a scientific explanation of the modern doctrine of Apper- 
 ception. 
 
 Experience shows that the book is admirably adapted to training- 
 classes in normal schools, and to city or village reading circles, 
 while no live teacher can afford to remain partially or wholly uncon- 
 cious of what it reveals. 
 
 J. W. Stearns, Ph.D., Prof. of Pe- 
 dagogy, in Wisconsin State Univ. : It is 
 the first real step toward the development 
 of a science of methods in this country. 
 
 B. A. Hinsdale, Prof, of Pedagogy, 
 Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor: A very 
 good book indeed for students of educa- 
 tional science. I show my opinion of it 
 by putting it on a short list of books that 
 1 recommend to teachers. 
 
 T. H. Balliet, Sufi, of Schools, 
 Sfringfeld, Mass.: I think it has as 
 much sound thought to the square inch as 
 anything I know of in pedagogics. 
 
 Oeo. Morris Philips, Ph.D., Prin. 
 State Normal School, West Chester, Pa.: 
 An unusually excellent little book ; there 
 can be no question of its merit. 
 
 J. O. Greenough, Prin. of West- 
 field Normal School, Mass. : A small 
 book but a great work. One of the best 
 pedagogical books ever published in the 
 English language. 
 
 M. L. Seymour, Prof, in State Nor. 
 mal School, Chico, Cal. : It is a book 
 without a peer or rival in the discussion 
 of the underlying principles of methods in 
 teaching. // should be the daily com fan- 
 ion of every teacher until fully assimi- 
 lated. 
 
 B. O. Boone, Prof, of Pedagogy, 
 Univ. of I nd.: It seems to me very sug- 
 gestive and along right lines as counteract- 
 ing the wide-spread tendency to adopt de- 
 vice and formula. It promises teachers \ 
 rich return for the most careful perusal.
 
 /I2 
 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 The Science of Education. 
 
 Translated from the German of HERBART by Mr. and Mrs. FELKIN. With an 
 introduction by OSCAR BROWNING. 268 pages. Cloth. Retail price, 1.00. 
 
 T T ERBART began the study of education and of the human mind as 
 *ll a private tutor of boys of gentle birth and nurture intended to 
 receive the higher education. His experiences, therefore and with 
 him theory and practice always went hand in hand are of especial 
 value to teachers in public schools. 
 
 " Mr. and Mrs. Felkin deserve the thanks of all who are interested 
 in education by making these writings of Herbart accessible to English 
 readers. They have accomplished their work with the greatest care 
 and self-denying zeal. The translation is as readable as is consistent 
 with an exact rendering of the original. If it is carefully studied, as it 
 ought to be, there will be no difficulty in understanding it. Their in- 
 troduction is probably the best account of Herbart which has appeared 
 in our tongue." From Mr. Brownings Introduction. 
 
 L. R. Klemm, of the Bureau of 
 Education, Washington, D, C.: It is with 
 pardonable admiration for your " pluck " 
 that I lay down Herbart's Science of edu- 
 cation after a thorough examination. I 
 say " pluck," because it certainly needs a 
 good deal of aggressive courage to offer 
 the teachers of America such a work for 
 professional study. The book is happily 
 introduced by the chapter on the life of 
 Herbart, his philosophy and principles of 
 education, and the two analyses by the 
 translators. They offer a very convenient 
 key to the treasures of Herbart's book. 
 1 like the translation; have compared 
 whole pages with the original, and am 
 well pleased. It is a very creditable work. 
 As a member of the profession of teachers, 
 I offer you my gratitude for this publica- 
 tion. (Sept. 25, 1893.) 
 
 S. Q. Williams, Professor of Phi- 
 losophy, Cornell University, Ithaca, 
 N.Y.: I have read the book carefully and 
 compared portions with the original, and 
 I feel that you deserve the thanks of 
 English speaking teachers for placing 
 
 within their reach the work of this leader of 
 modern German pedagogic thought. The 
 translation is so neat and so true to the 
 original that it not infrequently makes 
 the concise and somewhat poetic diction 
 of the author more readily comprehensible 
 than the original. (Oct. 16, 1893.) 
 
 Educational Courant, Louisville, 
 Ky.: It is a work that no educator can 
 afford not to read and study. The volume 
 will influence our theory and practice for 
 years to come, and he who remains ig- 
 norant of its contents can justly be ac- 
 cused of wilful ignorance of what most 
 intimately concerns him. 
 
 Science, New York: Following the 
 entertaining sketch of Herbart's life the 
 translators have given a review of Her- 
 bart's philosophy, together with a synop- 
 sis of the two works which follow and 
 form the principal portion of the book. 
 The review has evidently been written from 
 a thorough acquaintance with Herbart's 
 writings and is an additional aid to our un- 
 derstanding of his principles.
 
 U4 
 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 Rosminfs Method in Education. 
 
 Translated from the Italian of ANTONIO ROSMINI SERBATI by Mrs. WILLIAM 
 GREY, whose name has been widely known in England for many years past as 
 a leader in the movement for the higher education of women. Cloth. 389 pages. 
 Retail price, $1.50. 
 
 THIS is a work of singular interest for the educational world, and 
 especially for all those who desire to place education on a 
 scientific basis. 
 
 It is an admirable exposition of the method of presenting knowl- 
 edge to the human mind in accordance with the natural laws of its 
 development ; and the disciples of Frcebel will find in it not only a 
 perfectly independent confirmation, but the true psychological estimate 
 of the principles of Froebel's kindergarten system. We believe that 
 this translation of the work of the great Italian thinker will prove a 
 boon to all English-speaking lovers of true education. 
 
 stand it thoroughly from cover to cover j 
 for while I may not always agree with it, 
 
 Thomas Davidson : It is the most 
 important pedagogical work ever written. 
 
 J. W. Stearns, Prof, of Science and 
 Art of Teaching, Univ. of Wisconsin : 
 No one who cares to understand the psy- 
 chological grounds upon which right 
 primary methods must rest can afford to 
 pass this book by. It is a clear, simple, 
 and methodical inquiry into the develop- 
 ment of the infant mind, and the kind of 
 knowledge adapted to the different stages 
 of its growth, and ought to be at once re- 
 ceived with favor by American teachers. 
 
 I shall take great pleasure in -calling 
 the attention of my classes to this book, 
 and to the list published by your house, 
 which seems to me composed of very val- 
 uable works. 
 
 Mary Sheldon Barnes, formerly 
 Prof, of History in Welleslcy Coll.^tass. : 
 This is a very exceptional work, in that it 
 is at the same time philosophical and 
 practical. I feel as if, in the midst of all 
 the fragmentary, erratic, commonplace 
 tuff that is usually relegated to the name 
 of Pedagogies, something worthy, clear, 
 and intellectually inspiring had at length 
 
 still it will compel me to define more 
 clearly just what I do think a most val- 
 uable intellectual service. 
 
 The Nation: The book shows the 
 influence of psychology in determining all 
 methods of pedagogy, and moves towards 
 the practical spirit of modern times in that 
 it has no speculative problems to solve, 
 and no special intellectual ends like those 
 of philosophy to condition the mode of 
 education it defends. 
 
 New York World: His ideal of life 
 is so high, his motives are everywhere so 
 noble, that the very perusal of his book 
 will be itself a sort of education to parents 
 and teachers. And we should say that 
 no parent or teacher having at heart the 
 highest good of the children committed to 
 his care can afford to be without this book. 
 It will impress those who read it with the 
 importance of education and of its far- 
 reaching power, and render teachers earn- 
 est in neir work. The translation is well 
 done. Mrs. Grey, who, a most excellent 
 Italian scholar, has come to the work with 
 
 appeared. For myself, I wish to under- 1 every advantage.
 
 EDUCATION. 117 
 
 The Student's Froebel. 
 
 By WILLIAM H. HERFORD, late member of the Universities of Bonn, Berlin, 
 and Zurich. Cloth. 128 pages. Retail price, 75 cents. 
 
 THE purpose of this little book, as stated by the editor in his preface, 
 is to give young people, who are seriously preparing themselves 
 to become teachers, a brief yet full account of Froebers Theory of 
 Education ; his practice or plans of method is reserved for a second 
 part. This book is adapted from Froebel's Education of Humanity 
 {Die Erziehung der Menschheit}, published in 1826. The editor has 
 tried to give what is Froebel's own in English as close as possible to 
 the very words of his author. The book, in addition to an Introduc- 
 tion treating of the subject in general, has chapters on The Nursling, 
 The Child, The Boy, and The School, and summaries of the teachings. 
 
 The Psychology of Childhood. 
 
 By FREDERICK TRACY, Fellow in Clark University, with Introduction by Presi- 
 dent G. STANLEY HALL. Octavo. Paper. Retail price, 75 cents. 
 
 THE author has in this work undertaken to present as concisely, yet 
 as completely, as possible, the results of the systematic study of 
 children, and has included everything of importance that can be found. 
 Some of its special features are thus summarized : (i) It is the first 
 general treatise, covering the whole field of child psychology. (2) It 
 aims to contain a complete summary, up to date, of all work done in 
 this field. (3) The work contains a large amount of material, the re- 
 sults of the author's own observations on children as well as those of 
 perhaps a score of very reliable observers. (4) The subject of child- 
 language has been gone into with especial thoroughness, from an en- 
 tirely new and original standpoint, and with very gratifying results. 
 (5) A very exhaustive bibliography, containing, it is believed, every- 
 thing of value that has ever been written on this subject, is appended. 
 
 J. Clark Murray, Prof, of Philo- 
 sophy, McGill University ', Montreal, Ca- 
 nada: In English we have certainly no 
 original work on the psychology of child 
 hood to compare with it, and even among 
 translations from German and French there 
 is none which shows such a mastery of the 
 whole subject. (Noi\ 14, 1893.) 
 
 Earl Barnes, Department of Edu- 
 cation, Leland Stanford Jr. University, 
 CaL: No book has come from the press 
 during the past year which I have been 
 so glad to see as this one. For all of us 
 who are carrying on courses in the psychol- 
 ogy of children it will prove an invaluable 
 aid. (Nov. 23, 1893.)
 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 Compayr'S History Of Pedagogy. " The best and most comprehensive history of 
 
 Education in English." Dr. G. S. HALL, f 1-75. 
 Compayr's Lectures On Teaching. "The best book in existence on the theory and 
 
 practice of education." Supt. MACALISTER, Philadelphia. $1.75. 
 
 Compayr^'s Psychology Applied tO Education. A clear and concise statement 
 of doctrine and application on the science and art of teaching. 90 cts. 
 
 De GarinO's Essentials Of Method. A practical exposition of methods with illustra- 
 tive outlines of common school studies. 65 cts. 
 
 De Garmo's Lindner's Psychology. The best Manual ever prepared from the 
 Herbartian standpoint. $1.00. 
 
 Gill's Systems Of Education. " It treats ably of the Lancaster and Bell movement 
 in education, a very important phase." Dr. W. T. HARRIS, f 1.25. 
 
 Hall's Bibliography of Pedagogical Literature. Covers every department of 
 
 education. Interleaved, '$2.00. $1.50. 
 
 Herford's Student's Froebel. The purpose of this little book is to give young people 
 preparing to teach a brief yet full account of Froebel's Theory of Education. 75 cts. 
 
 Malleson s Early Training of Children. "The best book for mothers I ever 
 
 read." ELIZABETH P. PEABODV. 75 cts. 
 Marwedel's Conscious Motherhood. The unfolding of the child's mind in the 
 
 cradle, nursery and Kindergarten. $1.00. 
 Newsholme's School Hygiene. Already in use in the leading training colleges in 
 
 England. 75 cts. 
 
 Peabody's Home, Kindergarten, and Primary School. "The best book out- 
 side of the Bible that I ever read." A LEADING TEACHER. $1.00. 
 
 Pestalozzi's Leonard and Gertrude. " If we except ' Emile ' only, no more im- 
 portant educational book has appeared for a century and a half than ' Leonard and Ger- 
 trude.' " The Nation. 90 cts. 
 
 RadestOCk's Habit in Education. " It will prove a rare 'find' to teachers who are 
 seeking to ground themselves in the philosophy of their art." E. H. RUSSELL, Worces- 
 ter Normal School. 75 cts. 
 
 Richter's Levana ; or, The Doctrine of Education. " A spirited and scholarly 
 
 book." Prof. W. H. PAYNK. $1.40. 
 
 Rosmini's Method in Education. " The most important pedagogical work ever 
 written. 1 ' THOMAS DAVIDSON. $1.50. 
 
 Rousseau's Emile. " Perhaps the most influential book ever written on the subject of 
 
 Education." R. H. QUICK. 90 cts. 
 Methods Of Teaching Modern Languages. Papers on the value and on methods 
 
 of teaching German and French, by prominent instructors. 90 cts. 
 
 Sanford'a Laboratory Course in Physiological Psychology. The course 
 
 includes experiments upon the Dermal Senses, Static and Kinxsthetic Senses, Taste, 
 Smell, Hearing, Vision, Psychophysic. In Press. 
 
 Lange's Apperception : A monograph on Psychology and Pedagogy. Trans- 
 lated by the members of the Herbart Club, under the direction of President Charles 
 DfiGarmo, of Swarthmore College. $1.00. 
 
 Herbart'S Science Of Education. Translated by Mr. and Mrs. Felken with a pref- 
 ace by Oscar Browning. Ji.oo. 
 
 Tracy's Psychology Of Childhood. This is the first general treatise covering in a 
 scientific manner the whole field of child psychology. Octavo. Paper. 75 cts. 
 Sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of price. 
 
 D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS, 
 
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