This inner apperception, as it has been sometimes called, takes place constantly when we are occupied with our own thoughts, rather than with external impressions. With persons of deep, steady, reflective habits, it is the chief means of organizing their mental stores. The feelings and the will have much also to do with this process.
The laws of association draw the feelings as much as the intellectual states into apperceptive acts. I hear of a friend who has had disasters in business and has lost his whole fortune. If I have never experienced such difficulties myself, the chances are that the news will not make a deep impression upon me. But if I have once gone through the despondency of such a crushing defeat, sympathy for my friend will be awakened, and I may feel his trouble almost as my own. The meaning of such an item of news depends upon the response which it finds in my own feelings. It is well known that those friends can best sympathize with us in our trouble who have passed through the same troubles. Even enemies are not lacking in sympathy with each other when an appeal is made to deep feelings and experiences common to both.
The feeling of interest, which we have emphasized so much, is chiefly, if not wholly, dependent upon apperceptive conditions. Select a lesson adapted to the age and understanding of a child, present it in such a way as to recall and make use of his previous experience, and interest is certain to follow. The outcome of a successful act of apperception is always a feeling of pleasure, or at least of interest. When the principle of apperception is fully applied in teaching, the progress from one point to another is so gradual and clear that it gives pleasure. The clearness and understanding with which we receive knowledge adds greatly to our interest in it. On the contrary, when apperception is violated, and new knowledge is only half understood and assimilated there can be but little feeling of satisfaction. "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 the growth of our knowledge and power of understanding. The significance of this new impression for our ego is now more strongly felt than at the beginning or during the course of the progress. To this pleasurable feeling is easily added the effort, at favorable opportunity, to reproduce the product of the apperception, to supplement and deepen it, to unite it to other ideas, and so further to extend certain chains of thought. The summit or sum of these states of mind we happily express with the word interest. For in reality the feeling of self appears between the various stages of the process of apperception (inter esse); with one's whole soul does one contemplate the object of attention. If we regard the acquired knowledge as the objective result of apperception, interest must be regarded as the subjective side." (Lange, Apperception, page 19.)
Finally, the will has much to do with conscious efforts at apperception. It holds the thought to certain groups; it excludes or pushes back irrelevant ideas that crowd in; it holds to a steady comparison of ideas, even where perplexity and obscurity trouble the thinker. When the process of reaching a conclusion takes much time, when conflict or contradiction have to be removed or adjusted, when reflection and reasoning are necessary, the will is of great importance in giving coherency and steadiness to the apperceptive effort. A conscious effort at apperception, therefore, may include many elements, sense perceptions, ideas recalled, feeling, will.
"Let us now sum up the essentials in the process of apperception. First of all, an external or internal perception, an idea, or idea-complex appears in consciousness, finding more or less response in the mind; that is, giving rise to greater or less stimulation to thought and feeling.
"In consequence of this, and in accordance with the psychical mechanism or an impulse of the will, one or more groups of thoughts arise, which enter into relation to the perception. While the two masses are compared with one another, 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 concerned 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." (Lange, Apperception, page 41.)
Important conclusions drawn from a study of apperception:
1. Value of previous knowledge. If knowledge once acquired is so valuable we are first of all urged to make the acquisition permanent. Thorough mastery and frequent reviews are necessary to make knowledge stick. Careless and superficial study is injurious. It is sometimes carelessly remarked by those who are supposed to be wise in educational matters that it makes no difference how much we forget if we only have proper drill and training to study. That is, how we study is more important than what we learn. But viewed in the light of apperception, acquired knowledge should be retained and used, for it unlocks the door to more knowledge. Thorough mastery and retention of the elements of knowledge in the different branches is the only solid road to progress. In this connection we can see the importance of learning only what is worth remembering, what will prove a valuable treasure in future study. In the selection of material for school studies, therefore, we must keep in mind knowledge which, as Comenius says, is of solid utility. Having once selected and acquired such materials, we are next impelled to make constant use of them. If the acquisition of new information depends so much upon the right use of previous knowledge, we are called upon to build constantly upon this foundation. This is true whether the child's knowledge has been acquired at school or at home. In order to make things clear and interesting to boys and girls we must refer every day to what they have before learned in school and out of school.
Again, if we accept the doctrine that old ideas are the materials out of which we constantly build bridges across into new fields of knowledge, we must know the children better and what store of knowledge they have already acquired. Just as an army marching into a new country must know well the country through which it has passed and must keep open the line of communication and the base of supplies, so the student must always have a safe retreat into his past, and a base of supplies to sustain him in his onward movements. The tendency is very strong for a grade teacher to think that she needs to know nothing except the facts to be acquired in her own grade. But she should remember that her grade is only a station on the highway to learning and life. In teaching we cannot by any shift dispense with the ideas children have gained at home, at play, in the school and outside of it. This, in connection with what the child has learned in the previous grades, constitutes a stock of ideas, a capital, upon which the teacher should freely draw in illustrating daily lessons.
2. The use of our acquired stock of ideas involves a constant working over of old ideas, and this working-over process not only reviews and strengthens past knowledge, keeping it from forgetfulness, but it throws new light upon it and exposes it to a many-sided criticism. In the first place familiar ideas should not be allowed to rest in the mind unused. Like tools for service they must be kept bright and sharp. One reason why so many of the valuable ideas we have acquired have gradually disappeared from the mind is because they remained so long unused that they faded out of sight. The old saying that "repetition is the mother of studies" needs to be recalled and emphasized. By being put in contact, with new ideas, old notions are seen and appreciated in new relations. Facts that have long lain unexplained in the mind, suddenly receive a new interpretation, a vivid and rational meaning. Or the old meaning is intensified and vivified by putting a new fact in conjunction with it.