Apperception

“ It is, moreover, hardly worth while to pretend to analyze the so-called apperceptive performances beyond the first or perceptive stage, because their variations and degrees are literally innumerable. 'Apperception' is a name for the sum total of the effects of what we have studied as association; and it is obvious that the things which a given experience will suggest to a man depend on what Mr. Lewes calls his entire psychostatical conditions, his nature and stock of ideas, or, in other words, his character, habits, memory, education, previous experience, and momentary mood. ”

“ We observed first what essential services apperception performs 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 expend 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. ”

“ Doubtless, professed psychologists would insist upon other points. For my part, the central interest still attaches to Wundt's theory of apperception and will. I take the former as a typical illustration of the direction in which physiological psychology moves.
In apperception the conscious being brings his entire unity of experience to bear on the object now in the field of his attention. We light upon an inner and elaborative activity which "bears the stamp of spontaneity." ”

“ Although the a priori moment commonly shows itself to be the more powerful, apperception-processes can perfectly well occur in which the new observation transforms or enriches the apperceiving group of ideas. A child who hitherto has seen none but four-cornered tables apperceives a round one as a table ”

“ Apperception, however, is not limited to the effects of external objects upon us, to the influence of ideas coming from without upon our old stores of knowledge. Old ideas, long since stored in the mind, may be freshly called up and brought into such contact with each other that new results follow, new apperceptions take place. In moments of reflection we are often surprised by conclusions that had not presented themselves to us before. ”

“ Perhaps the word 'apperception' flourished in their eyes and ears as it nowadays often is, embodies as much of this mystification as any other single thing. The conscientious young teacher is led to believe that it contains a recondite and portentous secret, by losing the true inwardness of which her whole career may be shattered. ”

“ It widens itself in that every mental act whatever comes to stand in relation to our will; and it narrows itself in that it concentrates itself more and more upon the inner activity of apperception, over against which our own body and all the representations connected with it appear as external objects, different from our proper self. This consciousness, contracted down to the process of apperception, we call our Ego; and the apperception of mental objects in general, may thus, after Leibnitz, be designated as the raising of them into our self-consciousness. ”

“ The phenomena of apperception, in fact, form only one aspect of a general law. As that which we have perceived conditions what we can now perceive, so that which we have done conditions what we shall do. It therefore appears that in spite of angry youthful revolts or mature sophistications, early religious training, and especially repeated religious acts, are likely to influence the whole of our future lives. Though all they meant to us seems dead or unreal, they have retreated to the dark background of consciousness and there live on. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ This apperceptive power is of vast importance in practical life as it leads to quick judgment and action, when personal examinations into details would be impossible.
In apperception we never pass from the known to things which are entirely new. Absolutely new knowledge is gained by perception or intuition. When an older person meets with something totally new, he either does not notice it or it staggers him. Apperception does not take place. ”

“ We started out from the fact that it was extremely difficult to apprehend with absolute uniformity a row of identical beats, since we are always inclined to accentuate certain beats. This phenomenon is clearly connected with a fundamental characteristic of apperception, which intervenes in all processes of consciousness. We know, from ordinary life, that we are not able to direct our attention perfectly steadily and uniformly to one and the same object. When we attempt to do this, we notice that a continual change takes place in the apperception of the object in question. ”

“ It is at once evident that, by reason of this inner conformity, apperception itself may be looked upon as a volitional process. It occurs as an essential factor in all inner and outer volitional acts, and as an ever-present one in the feelings of activity so characteristic of the will. Herein lies the chief motive for the fact that we look upon the will as our most private possession, the one that is most identical with our inner nature itself. ”

“ All facts of observation are necessarily seen in the light of the observer’s habits of thought, and the most intimate and inveterate of his habits of thought is the experience of his own initiative and endeavours. It is to this “apperception mass” that objects of apperception are finally referred, and it is in terms of this experience that their measure is finally taken. No psychological phenomenon is more familiar than this ubiquitous “personal equation” in men’s apprehension of whatever facts come within their observation. ”

“ If we apprehend an impression which is given to us without our assistance, the attention seems in a sense to be compelled to turn to this impression, following this single motive. We can express this by saying we apprehend it passively. The feeling of activity always follows such an impression. If on the other hand we turn to an expected impression, then these feelings of strain and excitation clearly precede the impression. We are aware that our apperception is active. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus on every occasion where the Will is exercised, it has to act not only on the facts which are perceived but as they are perceived. Now so far as the influence of what is called apperception is concerned we are in the realm of natural law. ”

“ Associated Interest depends largely upon the principle of Association or Apperception, the latter being defined as "that mental process by which the perceptions or ideas are brought into relation to our previous ideas and feelings, and thus are given a new clearness, meaning and application." Apperception is the mental process by which objects and ideas presented to us are perceived and thought of by us in the light of our past experience, temperament, tastes, likes and dislikes, occupation, interest, prejudices, etc., instead of as they actually are. ”

“ Apperception may be defined as that interaction between two similar ideas or thought-complexes in the course of which the weaker, unorganized, isolated idea or thought-complex is incorporated into the richer, better digested, and more firmly compacted one. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Even although they are in the darkest region of consciousness, they form, along with the feeling-tone of the chief idea, important components of the feelings accompanying the processes of cognition and recognition, especially in regard to their influence upon the apperception. ”

“ We see everything through the colored glasses of our own personality and character. Halleck says of Apperception: "A woman may apperceive a passing bird as an ornament to her bonnet; a fruit grower, as an insect killer ”

“ Educated as we already are, we never get an experience that remains for us completely nondescript: it always reminds of something similar in quality, or of some context that might have surrounded it before, and which it now in some way suggests. This mental escort which the mind supplies is drawn, of course, from the mind's ready-made stock. We conceive the impression in some definite way. We dispose of it according to our acquired possibilities, be they few or many, in the way of 'ideas.' This way of taking in the object is the process of apperception. ”

“ How can we even be assured that there is any principle of constancy in their relations to our consciousness? The senses often delude us; we are convinced, in dreams, of the reality of appearances which, nevertheless, have no reality—-why may not all perception be a delusion? ”

“ Spiritualistic phenomena present a perfect mine for illustrations of the psychology of deception, and it is these that I shall consider as the final topic in this cursory view.
The first general principle to be borne in mind is that the medium performs to spectators in doubt as to the interpretation to be placed upon what they see, or more or less prepared or determined to see in everything the evidence of the supernatural. This mental attitude on the part of the spectators is worth more to the medium than any single factor in the performance. ”

“ How do you know that you really exist? Here you are at the end of doubt, and here a still, small voice cries to you, 'I, I am, for I think, I doubt my being; I, the thought, the doubt within me, I exist, even if all around me disappear in illusion and shadow.' Begin with doubt and you can stop at no arbitrary resting-place. ”

“ But what after all is the character of these pleasures upon which there is such a high estimate placed? They are all vain and empty as a bubble on the wave. They are like a dream which assumes all the appearance of reality, till we awake from our slumber and discover the deception. ”

“ Alike in ordinary life and in science, even in science where such a result was perhaps hardly to be expected, we found what at least seemed like illusion and what certainly was paradox, and almost against our will we had to conclude that a spirit of contradiction and duplicity and vacillation dwelt at the very centre and the very heart of our human experience. ”

“ Perpetual conversance with ideas of supernaturalism; daily and nightly communications, whether in the form of conscious imposture or honest delusion, with the spiritual world, continued through a great length of time,—as much at least as the exclusive contemplation of any one idea or class of ideas,—must be allowed to be unsalutary. Whatever keeps the thoughts wholly apart from the objects of real and natural life, and absorbs them in abstractions, cannot be favorable to the soundness of the faculties or the tone of the [ii.392] mind. ”

“ What assurance have you that all you see, all you know by experience, and feel in your heart is aught else than illusion and deception? What is so firmly and deeply founded that it cannot be torn up by doubts? ”

“ A strong wish for a thing will, in an exalted state of mind, beget a vivid anticipation of it. This subject will be touched on again under the Illusions of Belief. Here I am concerned to point out that such presentiments are fertile sources of sense-illusion. The history of Church miracles, visions, and the like amply illustrates the effect of a vivid anticipation in falsifying the perceptions of external things.
In persons of a lively imagination any recent occupation of the mind with a certain kind of mental image may suffice to beget something equivalent to a powerful mode of expectation. ”

“ I cheered her with saying that the dark day, at the end, would be for the like of me; inasmuch as, going in our small way by experience and observation, we depended not on a revelation, but on a little tiresome process. Observation depended on opportunity, and where should we be when opportunity failed? ”

“ The movement of attention fastening upon the presentation to be apperceived, fixes it in the focus of consciousness, until the appercipient system has finally succeeded or failed in assimilating it. The reason why one ideal group becomes appercipient in preference to the others lies mainly in its greater affinity with the presentation to be apperceived. The conditions determining the strength of apperceptive systems may be either extrinsic or intrinsic. The extrinsic consist in passing circumstances which from time to time favor its activity. ”