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Page 39
In some of the books we find the various forms of apperception codified,
and their subdivisions numbered and ticketed in tabular form in the way
so delightful to the pedagogic eye. In one book which I remember reading
there were sixteen different types of apperception discriminated from
each other. There was associative apperception, subsumptive
apperception, assimilative apperception, and others up to sixteen. It is
needless to say that this is nothing but an exhibition of the crass
artificiality which has always haunted psychology, and which perpetuates
itself by lingering along, especially in these works which are
advertised as 'written for the use of teachers.' The flowing life of the
mind is sorted into parcels suitable for presentation in the
recitation-room, and chopped up into supposed 'processes' with long
Greek and Latin names, which in real life have no distinct existence.
There is no reason, if we are classing the different types of
apperception, why we should stop at sixteen rather than sixteen hundred.
There are as many types of apperception as there are possible ways in
which an incoming experience may be reacted on by an individual mind. A
little while ago, at Buffalo, I was the guest of a lady who, a fortnight
before, had taken her seven-year-old boy for the first time to Niagara
Falls. The child silently glared at the phenomenon until his mother,
supposing him struck speechless by its sublimity, said, "Well, my boy,
what do you think of it?" to which, "Is that the kind of spray I spray
my nose with?" was the boy's only reply. That was his mode of
apperceiving the spectacle. You may claim this as a particular type, and
call it by the Greek name of rhinotherapeutical apperception, if you
like; and, if you do, you will hardly be more trivial or artificial than
are some of the authors of the books.
M. Perez, in one of his books on childhood, gives a good example of the
different modes of apperception of the same phenomenon which are
possible at different stages of individual experience. A dwelling-house
took fire, and an infant in the family, witnessing the conflagration
from the arms of his nurse, standing outside, expressed nothing but the
liveliest delight at its brilliancy. But, when the bell of the fire
engine was heard approaching, the child was thrown by the sound into a
paroxysm of fear, strange sounds being, as you know, very alarming to
young children. In what opposite ways must the child's parents have
apperceived the burning house and the engine respectively!
The self-same person, according to the line of thought he may be in, or
to his emotional mood, will apperceive the same impression quite
differently on different occasions. A medical or engineering expert
retained on one side of a case will not apperceive the facts in the same
way as if the other side had retained him. When people are at
loggerheads about the interpretation of a fact, it usually shows that
they have too few heads of classification to apperceive by; for, as a
general thing, the fact of such a dispute is enough to show that neither
one of their rival interpretations is a perfect fit. Both sides deal
with the matter by approximation, squeezing it under the handiest or
least disturbing conception: whereas it would, nine times out of ten, be
better to enlarge their stock of ideas or invent some altogether new
title for the phenomenon.
Thus, in biology, we used to have interminable discussion as to whether
certain single-celled organisms were animals or vegetables, until
Haeckel introduced the new apperceptive name of Protista, which ended
the disputes. In law courts no _tertium quid_ is recognized between
insanity and sanity. If sane, a man is punished: if insane, acquitted;
and it is seldom hard to find two experts who will take opposite views
of his case. All the while, nature is more subtle than our doctors. Just
as a room is neither dark nor light absolutely, but might be dark for a
watchmaker's uses, and yet light enough to eat in or play in, so a man
may be sane for some purposes and insane for others,--sane enough to be
left at large, yet not sane enough to take care of his financial
affairs. The word 'crank,' which became familiar at the time of
Guiteau's trial, fulfilled the need of a _tertium quid_. The foreign
terms 'd�s�quilibr�,' 'hereditary degenerate,' and 'psychopathic'
subject, have arisen in response to the same need.
The whole progress of our sciences goes on by the invention of newly
forged technical names whereby to designate the newly remarked aspects
of phenomena,--phenomena which could only be squeezed with violence into
the pigeonholes of the earlier stock of conceptions. As time goes on,
our vocabulary becomes thus ever more and more voluminous, having to
keep up with the ever-growing multitude of our stock of apperceiving
ideas.
In this gradual process of interaction between the new and the old, not
only is the new modified and determined by the particular sort of old
which apperceives it, but the apperceiving mass, the old itself, is
modified by the particular kind of new which it assimilates. Thus, to
take the stock German example of the child brought up in a house where
there are no tables but square ones, 'table' means for him a thing in
which square corners are essential. But, if he goes to a house where
there are round tables and still calls them tables, his apperceiving
notion 'table' acquires immediately a wider inward content. In this way,
our conceptions are constantly dropping characters once supposed
essential, and including others once supposed inadmissible. The
extension of the notion 'beast' to porpoises and whales, of the notion
'organism' to society, are familiar examples of what I mean.
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