APPERCEPTION
There are cases of severe insanity in which the patients utter with
great rapidity a number of words, joined together without sense and
sometimes intermingled with absolutely meaningless sounds. This symptom
is considered a component of the so-called "flight of ideas." A sane
person can also produce this, if he, without any train of thought,
simply repeats any words that may occur to him. For example, the
following is such a series of words: "school house garden build stones
ground hard soft long see harvest rain move pain." Compare with this a
context like the following out of the seventh book of Goethe's _Wilhelm
Meister_: "Spring had come in all its glory. A spring thunder-storm,
that had been threatening the whole day long, passed angrily over the
hills. The rain-clouds swept over the land, the sun came out again
in his majesty, and the glorious rainbow appeared against the grey
background." Wherein do these two word-combinations differ from each
other? We are perhaps inclined to answer that the first series is
lacking in any connection between the separate elements. It seems
almost like a series of words taken at haphazard out of a dictionary
and placed aimlessly one after the other. And yet one soon notices that
the separate words are not quite so unconnected, as at the first glance
they seem to be. As a rule it is obviously some memory-association
that combines the succeeding word with the preceding one, as "house"
with "school," and "garden" with "house," and so on. Sometimes the
association may join a word with one preceding it at a greater distance
back, or it may join two different words to the same one, e.g. "stones"
with "build" and "house," "ground" with "garden." Sometimes also it
may not be the ideational content itself, but the mere rhyme, that
brings about the combination, as with "rain" and "pain." In other cases
we may not be able to find a definite association at all. And yet,
considering the many-sided and darkly perceived ideas often caused by
mere affective influences, which we have considered above, we cannot
help taking for granted latent associations in such cases as well, and
especially since these cases happen very seldom. A "free, unconnected
chain of ideas," as is sometimes presupposed, we shall place at once in
the same category with "chance" in the region of physical phenomena.
Just as in the latter case, it simply means for us that the cause
cannot be found in the case in question. From this point of view
the first series of words is in some way or other psychologically
conditioned in each of its elements by association, and still the
series does not form a whole. It resembles in a way a heap of stones,
out of which a house or several houses could possibly be built, but
to make them into a whole the building plan, the unifying thought,
is wanting. Now if we look at the second series of words, we see at
once that in this case also the different parts are joined together by
association. The general ideas of spring, thunderstorm, hills, rain,
sun, and rainbow are all links in an association-chain. But these
elements are so arranged as to make a unified image. The impression
of this image places us at once in the situation and mood that the
author wishes to awaken in the reader. In this picture none of the
chief component parts are superfluous; each is in close connection with
the whole, which as a total idea binds all these associated elements
together.
Now if we wished to distinguish the second from the first of the above
ideational series by the objective characteristic of the sensible
arrangement of its separate components, it would not be possible in
consequence of the subjective nature of the process. Let us suppose
that a child learns by heart the sentences from _Wilhelm Meister_
without in the least paying attention to the meaning of the words, as
it occasionally may happen, then the reproduction of these sentences
has for the child no sense. The difference between this and the first
series as to its psychological character is only apparent and not
real. The separate words in both cases are joined to each other by
mere association. In the consciousness of the child they do not form a
unified whole. Wherein lies the difference between this mere apparent
unity of sentences learned senselessly by heart and the real unity in
the mind of the author, who wrote them, or of the intelligent reader,
who reproduces the picture in his mind? Let us try to answer this
question in detail The author who first formed the picture, and the
reader who reproduces it, do not behave psychologically in exactly
the same manner. The whole, even although in indistinct outlines,
must be present in the consciousness of the author, before he writes
down his sentences. He behaves, to take an example from our metronome
experiments, in the same way as we do in listening to a certain rhythm,
which we are hearing into the uniform beats of the metronome, or
again, as we do when we beat with our finger a certain predetermined
rhythm. The whole was in his consciousness, but the separate parts
entered successively into the fixation-point of apperception and
then ultimately ended at the end of the paragraph with the total
feeling joined to the whole, which even at the beginning prepared
for and influenced the coming paragraph. The state of the reader,
who reproduces the author's thoughts, is a little different. From
the beginning his attention is directed towards one total idea made
up of many components, but this total idea is only produced from the
impression of the words read. With the author the whole is there at
the beginning and at the end of the production of the thought, which
is itself developed in the successive apperceptions of the separate
parts. With the reader there is at first only an expectation directed
towards a whole. This expectation is shown in feelings of strain which
are mostly regulated into definite qualitative directions, and these
feelings are sufficient to guide the conception of the developing parts
of the image into clear consciousness in the way in which the author
himself raised his total idea, which was at first indistinct. Thus in
both cases the activity of apperception is the essential factor, which
makes a difference in the formation of such a combination from that
of a mere association row. The thought-context changes into a mere
association, if the separate parts of the same are joined together
by memory alone and if they are reproduced without the inner unity
of thought. Now such a reproduction becomes a passively experienced
process, which lacks the consciousness of activity peculiar to the
self-production of a thought and also, with the above-mentioned
modifications, to its reproduction in the mind of the hearer or reader.
In both these cases it is that feeling of activity, that we have
mentioned above as the characteristic of active apperception, made up
of alternating feelings of excitation, strain, and relaxation--it is
this feeling of activity which gives the process the character whereby
it differs essentially from mere association.
While all apperceptions agree in the objective characteristics of
the combination of a complex into a unity and in the subjective one
of voluntary activity, yet in a further comparison of our thought
processes we meet with a very evident difference in the content of the
combined ideas. Think, for example, of a sentence such as the following
one from Kant: "Whether the treatment of knowledge, that belongs to
a critique of reason, is proceeding along the sure way of science or
not, can easily be judged by the result." If we compare this sentence
out of the Critique of Pure Reason with the above description, out of
_Wilhelm Meister_, may we not be inclined to say that each belongs to
quite a different world of thought? In our first example everything
is graphic, each word represents a sensuous idea, the whole is a
picture in words. In Kant not one single word is the expression of a
concrete object, they are all abstract concepts, which only obtain
some living content by means of further processes of thought, which
they stimulate. And yet the abstract thought-compound corresponds with
the concrete description in so far as it can be reduced ultimately to
concrete concepts. It has to make use of words, which as impressions
of the senses of hearing and seeing are themselves sensuous ideas.
Certainly such concepts as "knowledge," "reason," "science," and even
"treatment," "way," "result," which make up the sentence out of Kant,
are not in the least of a concrete character in the way they are used.
But if we go back to the original meanings of all these words, we find
every time that it is a sensuous one, i.e. relates to the senses.
"Treatment" at an earlier stage of language means something that we can
treat in a material sense, "knowledge" refers to sensuous knowledge
--something that we know by means of our senses, "reason" is nothing
but the understanding of words or similar sensible impressions. As
regards "way" it clearly bears the stamp of a concrete concept, it can
be used as synonymous with "road." And yet in all these cases, the
words in the thought, which they here help to express, are far removed
from their origins. Thus the most abstract thought can ultimately be
reduced in all its components to concrete concepts. And these words,
the means of expression, which we cannot dispense with, at the same
time bear witness to the fact that abstract thinking has developed
itself step by step from concrete. The history of knowledge teaches us
that this happened in the following manner. The original sensuous ideas
entered into the most manifest relations with each other, and then just
as at the primitive stage of thought the concrete ideas themselves were
joined together as separate elements of one thought, so at a higher
stage these relations between ideas were then treated as elements. So
the word "knowledge" represents an almost unlimited number of processes
of objective knowing, and thereby it becomes an abstract concept,
which can no longer be directly considered concrete. In this way there
is brought about, by an unceasing concatenation of apperceptions, a
continuous concentration of the thought process, which at the same
time represents a great saving and concentration in the work of
thinking. A concept, such as "knowledge," is like a bank-note that
represents an inexhaustible value of current coin. Very appropriate in
this connection is what Mephistopheles says to the student in Faust,
"One throw of the shuttle stirs up a thousand combinations." And even
although with the help of this development in meaning of word-ideas the
process of thinking may have very greatly diverged from its original
sensuous basis, it nevertheless remains in the actual process always
sensuous and concrete. For, to continue with Mephistopheles, "just
where concepts are lacking, a word comes in at the right moment."
Only in our sense the "word" has quite a serious meaning. The word is
the real ideational equivalent for the concept, that cannot be formed
into an idea. It changes abstract thoughts into concrete ideational
processes that can be heard and seen.
By the side of these concentrations caused by continuous apperceptions,
the primitive concrete thinking, along with all the intermediate steps
between the concrete object and the abstract concept, always preserves
its own value peculiar to each of these steps. And among this row of
values it is the most primitive one, the one that is directed solely
to the apprehension of reality, that receives a favoured place in
our life and thought--in our life, since we belong to the immediate
reality and intervene in it in our activity; in our thought, since we
always must think the abstract thought-complexes made real in their
separate applications, if we do not wish to lose ourselves altogether.
The special value of primitive apprehension, unweakened by any kind
of abstraction, finds expression in the fact that the two divisions
of human mental activity, which as complements to each other make
up the chief value of human life, i.e. science and art, make real
the two forms of thinking. Hence the creations of art are no less
thought-compounds than those of science. They follow in the general
laws of their construction exactly the same laws of apperception, which
we observed in the productions of thought contained in speech. The
thought is as a whole in our consciousness, and at first only works
upon the apperception by means of the resulting total feeling, and
then develops into its separate component parts by successive acts of
apperception. In exactly the same way the artist, the poet, or the
composer is accustomed to grasp the whole of the work of art in its
outlines, sometimes very indistinct, before he begins to carry out any
of the parts, and while carrying them out a total idea is formed, which
in its turn has a reciprocal influence upon the original idea. In both
cases, especially through the influence of intervening associations,
the thought-process or the composition of the work of art may undergo
deviations or additions in its separate parts. The regularity of the
process as a whole remains undisturbed by this. A work of art is just
as little a mere product of association as is a thought arranged in
sentences.
Various phenomena of everyday experience find their explanation in
these psychological observations. First of all must be mentioned the
seldom-noted fact, that we are able in our speech to bring to an end
a fairly complicated thought without difficulty, although at the
beginning of the sentences we are not at all clear as to the separate
words and ideas or their combinations. Some people, when they are
obliged to speak in public, fail simply because their confidence in
this self-regulation of the train of thoughts is lacking at such
moments. And this again is due to the fact that they think they must
first of all find the suitable transition from one word to the next.
In free conversation they can carry to an end without a break the most
complicated sentences, while in public their speech is hesitating and
embarrassed, and they are every moment in danger of breaking down.
In such a case absolute confidence in the possibility of expressing
freely and involuntarily the thought in one's mind is the surest help
to overcome these difficulties. Of course a sensible training will also
help.
Let us call to mind the processes by means of which the beginning and
end of an expression of thought are held together into one sentence or
into several sentences joined together by the same thought. We note at
once that the general content in its whole feeling-quality is already
present as soon as the first word is spoken, while the ideas and the
corresponding words are not clearly in consciousness beyond that first
beginning. If the process continues without associative distractions
and additions, by which, occasionally, parts that lie far from the
original thought are added to it, then we notice at the same time
that that beginning feeling corresponds perfectly with the terminal
feeling that accompanies the termination of the spoken thought. This
terminal feeling is generally at first much stronger than the initial
feeling, but then it gradually goes over into the feeling-quality that
is preparing the next thought. Now it is obvious at once that all
these phenomena correspond in essentials with those we observed in
our metronome experiments. In these experiments the conditions were
much more simple and exact, so that they strengthen the more uncertain
observations in ordinary reading and thinking.
More complicated than in ordinary speaking and thinking are the
phenomena where the sequence of thought-processes stretches over vast
creations of the mind. Very likely the whole of the idea hovers in
the mind of the artist, who has received an inspiration for a work
of art, or of the philosopher, who's filled with the conception of a
complicated system of thought, before either of them carries it out.
This anticipation can only be considered an indefinite total feeling,
which points the direction for the continuation of the thoughts, and
which becomes clearer itself during this continuation. At the same
time, in such complicated cases the distracting influences increase in
power continually, and accordingly continually alter the quality of the
feeling-tone that hovers over the whole. So it sometimes happens that
the resulting product becomes in its execution quite different from
what it was in its first conception, and it sometimes may happen that
such changes occur several times in the course of the process. In all
such cases this is generally caused by new associations, which arise
from single elements of the total thought, and which, if they do not
fit into the regular course, often assimilate with the total thought
in a similar manner, or crowd it out altogether. In combinations of
creations of thought these secondary influences ultimately increase
so much that the regular steady course becomes an exception, and the
preponderance of these transforming forces becomes the rule. Although
in most cases these phenomena defy objective control, yet there are
examples enough in which they can be clearly seen, at least their broad
outlines. So Goethe's _Faust_ shows clearly traces of a repeated change
in the idea of the whole, and the supposition is forced upon us that
the author in his later conceptions had forgotten his first ones. In
_Wilhelm Meister_ it almost seems as if he purposely had given as much
free scope as possible to the play of associations caused by the plot.
These may be extreme cases, and yet there is hardly in the province
of science or art any creation of thought which in its execution
remains free from any such intervening influences, which have their
source partly in new impressions and partly in the thought-compounds
caused by the execution or the elaboration of the same in the mind.
The two psychical processes, that here interact, have been brought by
psychologists under the concepts of "understanding" and "imagination."
Where a regular arrangement of the thought-compounds, bound up with a
tendency to form them abstractly, is uppermost, it is the custom to
assign this to the understanding. Where consciousness is more inclined
to the free play of associations and of newly excited thought-forms,
and at the same time to a more concrete form of thinking, it is
customary to speak of the activity of the imagination. But really
we are here not dealing with faculties of thought that can in any
way be separated, not even with functions of a different kind, but
at bottom always and only with a participation of the apperceptions
and associations that enter into all processes of thought, though
distributed in a relatively different manner. It is therefore an
absolutely wrong conception, if, according to the tradition of the old
psychology, imagination is called the specific property of art, and
understanding that of science. Science without imagination is worth
just as little as art without understanding.
These general conceptions of understanding and imagination correspond
in a certain sense only to different points of view, under which we
look at the mental functions, in themselves indivisible, and by means
of which we separate them according to the relative, participation of
their factors. So in the same way associations and combinations of
apperception are not processes which belong to differing regions of
our psychical life. On the contrary, not only are they always in a
state of interaction, but apperceptions show that they arise out of
associations, wherever we are able to trace them back to the conditions
of their development. Nowhere can we see so clearly this rise of
apperceptive combinations out of association as in spoken thought, the
region of mental activity which is more than any other open to us in
its objective forms. Let us explain this by means of an example, which
is closely connected with the above examples of concrete and abstract
forms of thought. We have taken the sentences out of _Wilhelm Meister_,
which describe the coming of spring, as a sample of sensuous objective
expression in the sense of forms of thought-construction familiar to
us. And yet they are absolutely controlled by the laws of our abstract
thinking, which join together widely separated elements of thought to
one total idea in the interests of a unified combination, and compel us
to use, in the form of particles and inflections, abstract elements of
conception in order to arrange the parts of the scene described. This
is different at a more primitive stage of thinking and expression in
speech. Let us take, for example, the following simple statement in our
own language: "He gave the children the slate-pencil." This sentence is
for us directly concrete. If, however, we were to translate it just as
it stands into the language of the inhabitants of the African colony
Togo, they would probably not understand it. For such an individual
even "slate-pencil" would be too abstract a conception. Further, he
would not be able to imagine how any one could give something without
having first of all taken it from somewhere else. The elements inserted
between "slate-pencil" and the action of giving, which to us serve
to combine the whole into one single idea, would mean to him rather
a mixture of disparate elements. Lastly, he cannot form the concept
"children" without thinking that they are children of some people or
other. Accordingly our sentence would run somewhat as follows in the
speech of the Togo negro: "He take stone to write something this gives
of somebody child they." We must note here that even this literal
translation still bears traces of the abstract culture of our language.
The difference between substantives and verbs, which we have been
forced to use, does not exist in the Togo language. If we look at such
a sentence a little more closely, it is at once evident that the ideas
are arranged exactly in the same order in which the objective process
takes place. Each word denotes only one idea and is not placed in any
grammatical category, since there are none such in this language.
Therefore the expression of thought is still in essentials at the stage
of pure association of ideas. Such a sentence only differentiates
itself from a perfectly unsystematic association, that strays from one
member to the other--as in the above-mentioned series, "school house
garden &c."--by the fact that it follows directly the action described
element for element, and therefore reproduces this in the memory
exactly as it took place in perception.
Here we meet clearly the two motives which raise pure associations
to apperceptive combinations by means of the impulses that lie in
the association itself. One of these motives is an objective one.
It lies in the regular concatenation of the outward phenomena which
present themselves to our view, and which force the association to
combine the ideas in the same regularity. A series, such as "school
house garden &c.," is only possible when the thought process frees
itself from perception and gives itself up to the incidental inner
motives, which remain when the continuous succession of phenomena
that regulates our thinking is wanting. Therefore association that
is joined to these phenomena is in itself the more primitive, and in
this way it is the regularity of the course of nature, which transfers
its regularity to the normal association of our ideas. Added to this
objective motive there is a second, a subjective one. We would not be
able to hold together in association a series of impressions given to
us in a certain order and to reproduce them again, were it not for our
attention that follows from member to member the separate parts of the
series, and ultimately binds them together into a whole. Thus ordered
thinking arises out of the ordered course of nature in which man finds
himself, and this thinking is from the beginning nothing more than the
subjective reproduction of the regularity according to law of natural
phenomena. On the other hand, this reproduction is only possible by
means of the will that controls the concatenation of ideas. Thus human
thought, like the human being himself, is at the same time the product
of nature and a creation of his own mental life, which in the human
will finds that unity which binds together the unbounded manifoldness
of mental contents into one whole. In this way the development of
apperceptive thought-combinations out of associations corroborates
further the result obtained above in considering volitional processes,
namely that to every outward voluntary action there correspond inner
acts of volition which are occupied in influencing the course of
thought. In the close combination between thought and speech this
connection between inner and outer volition comes most clearly to
light. We cannot act outwardly without at the same time executing
inner acts of will. Therefore ordered expression of thought in speech
corresponds as outward volitional activity to the control of the will
over the associations that originally stray here and there without
order. Even although thought in a primitive speech, as in the above
example, may be ever so near to mere association of ideas, yet the
control by the will is also to be seen in it, from the fact that the
association series is one that inwardly is connected together. And
with this we have the basis upon which the more complicated forms of
apperception can rise, because of the continuous concentrations and
combinations in thinking, and these latter at the same time find their
adequate expression in the forms of speech. This connection between
inner and outer volition, as we see it living in the connection between
thought and speech, is ultimately of as great practical as theoretical
importance. Only by considering this connection do we arrive at a
sufficient understanding for the higher productions of human mental
life. It also points forcibly to the fact that the most important
part of education for the formation of character--i.e. the training
of the will--should not only, and not even in the first instance, be
directed to the outward act. Rather must education pay most attention
to that inner volition which is occupied with ordered thinking. To
make this strong, to make this able to resist the distracting play of
associations, is its most important and also one of its most difficult
tasks.
Many attempts have been made to investigate the processes of thought
in other ways than in the way described above. At first it was
thought that the surest way would be to take as a foundation for the
psychological analysis of the thought-processes the laws of logical
thinking, as they had been laid down from the time of Aristotle by
the science of logic. Scholastic philosophy showed great subtlety in
this direction in changing psychical processes into logical judgments
and conclusions, and there are still followers of this direction
at the present day. Starting with the thought-processes in the
narrow meaning of the word, this logical explanation of everything
psychical was allowed to spread over to associations, the processes
of sense-perception, the pure sensations, feelings, emotions, &c., so
that in this old scholastic psychology the human consciousness was in
danger of becoming a scholastic philosopher, who regulated each of
his actions according to the laws of logic. Now such laws are a late
product of scientific thinking, which presupposes a long history of
thinking determined by a number of specific factors. These norms, even
for the fully-developed consciousness, only apply to a small part of
the thought-processes. Any attempt to explain, out of these norms,
thought in the psychological sense of the word can only lead to an
entanglement of the real facts in a net of logical reflections. We can
in fact say of such attempts, that measured by results they have been
absolutely fruitless. They have disregarded the psychical processes
themselves, and have gained nothing at all for the interpretation of
the laws of logic simply because they saw in them the primitive facts
of consciousness itself.
Many psychologists thought that this method could be improved by making
use of direct introspection. They thought by turning their attention
to their own consciousness to be able to explain what happened when we
were thinking. Or they sought to attain the same end by asking another
person a question, by means of which certain processes of thought would
be excited, and then by questioning the person about the introspection
he had made. It is obvious to the reader, who has followed our
discussion so far, that nothing can be discovered in such experiments,
where the most complicated psychical processes are investigated
directly and without any further preparation. We need first of all a
careful analysis of the more elementary psychical processes, of the
facts of attention and of the wider scope of consciousness as well as
of the relations between them and of the manifold affective processes
that intervene in all these cases. Without having gained by these
means the necessary information as to the general conditions and, so
to say, as to the scene over which our thought-processes move, it is
impossible in any way to understand these themselves in their psychical
combinations. Many psychologists have connected this difficulty, not
with the wrongness of their own method but with the essence of the
thought-process. This was explained as an unconscious and (since
all sense-perception belongs to consciousness) as a supersensual
phenomenon, in the interpretation of which each one must be left to his
own speculation. This opened the door at once to the explanation of
psychical phenomena according to logical reflections, that were at will
read into such phenomena. This alleged method of exact introspection
ended ultimately at the point from whence it started, i.e. the
scholastic philosophy.
In contradistinction to all this let us remember the rule, valid for
psychology as well as for any other science, that we cannot understand
the complex phenomena, before we have become familiar with the simple
ones, which presuppose the former. Now the general phenomena of the
course of simple processes in consciousness, as we have seen them in
their most concrete form and under the simplest conditions in our
observations of the combination and comparison of rows of beats, give
us the most general preliminary conditions, which must be held as a
criterion for much more complicated thought-processes. It is evident,
however, that these formal conditions of all processes of consciousness
cannot be sufficient to account for the special characteristics and
phenomena of the development of thought. To do this we must turn
our attention to this development itself, as it is shown in the
documents of the spoken expression of thought at different stages of
consciousness. It is unfortunate that in these and in other cases the
development of the child, that is for us the easiest to observe, can
give, as is obvious, only a few and in part only doubtful results.
The speech and thought of the child, under the present conditions of
culture, not only presuppose a number of inherited dispositions, whose
influences can scarcely be accurately traced, but it is also absolutely
impossible to withdraw the child from the influences to which, from
the very beginning, its environment gives rise. Therefore the mental
development of our children is under all circumstances not only an
accelerated but also in many respects an essentially changed one, in
comparison to a purely spontaneous development. On the other hand
there are, at least in a relative manner, such stages of a spontaneous
development of thinking, in many cases relatively independent of
outward influences of culture, in the mental life of more primitive
peoples. The different stages, which this mental life shows, find
their most adequate expression in the outward phenomena of this mental
life itself, and above all in those of speech, which is a means of
expression and an instrument of thought at the same time. We can by
means of the different stages of the development of speech follow
that gradual transition of associative into apperceptive processes
of consciousness from step to step. The example given above of a
relatively primitive form of spoken thought shows the relation in which
it stands to our languages of culture. A closer investigation of this
subject would lead us beyond the scope of individual psychology into
that of racial psychology, where the most important part deals with the
psychological development of thought and speech.