[35] Physiol. Optik, p. 741.
[36] I refer to a recency of a few hours. Mr. Galton found that experiences from boyhood and youth were more likely to be suggested by words seen at random than experiences of later years. See his highly interesting account of experiments in his Inquiries into Human Faculty, pp. 191-203.
[37] Miss M. W. Calkins (Philosophical Review, I. 389, 1892) points out that the persistent feature of the going thought, on which the association in cases of similarity hinges, is by no means always so slight as to warrant the term 'focalized.' "If the sight of the whole breakfast-room be followed by the visual image of yesterday's breakfast-table, with the same setting and in the same surroundings, the association is practically total," and yet the case is one of similarity. For Miss Calkins, accordingly, the more important distinction is that between what she calls desistent and persistent association. In 'desistent' association all parts of the going thought fade out and are replaced. In 'persistent' association some of them remain, and form a bond of similarity between the mind's successive objects; but only where this bond is extremely delicate (as in the case of an abstract relation or quality) is there need to call the persistent process 'focalized.' I must concede the justice of Miss Calkins's criticism, and think her new pair of terms a useful contribution. Wundt's division of associations into the two classes of external and internal is congruent with Miss Calkins's division. Things associated internally must have some element in common; and Miss Calkins's word 'persistent' suggests how this may cerebrally come to pass. 'Desistent,' on the other hand, suggests the process by which the successive ideas become external to each other or preserve no inner tie.
[38] A common figure-alphabet is this:
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 0 |
| t | n | m | r | l | sh | g | f | b | s |
| d | j | k | v | p | c | ||||
| ch | c | z | |||||||
| g | qu |
[39] In Mind, IX. 206, M. Binet points out the fact that what is fallaciously inferred is always an object of some other sense than the 'this.' 'Optical illusions' are generally errors of touch and muscular sensibility, and the fallaciously perceived object and the experiences which correct it are both tactile in these cases.
[40] Romanes, Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 324.
[41] M. Lazarus: Das Leben d. Seele (1857), II. p. 32. In the ordinary hearing of speech half the words we seem to hear are supplied out of our own head. A language with which we are familiar is understood even when spoken in low tones and far off. An unfamiliar language is unintelligible under these conditions. The 'ideas' for interpreting the sounds by not being ready-made in our minds, as they are in our familiar mother-tongue, do not start up at so faint a cue.
[42] Einleitung in die Psychologie u. Sprachwissenschaft (1881), p. 171.
[43] The great maxim in pedagogy is to knit every new piece of knowledge on to a preëxisting curiosity—i.e., to assimilate its matter in some way to what is already known. Hence the advantage of "comparing all that is far off and foreign to something that is near home, of making the unknown plain by the example of the known, and of connecting all the instruction with the personal experience of the pupil.... If the teacher is to explain the distance of the sun from the earth, let him ask ... 'If anyone there in the sun fired off a cannon straight at you, what should you do?' 'Get out of the way,' would be the answer. 'No need of that,' the teacher might reply. 'You may quietly go to sleep in your room, and get up again, you may wait till your confirmation-day, you may learn a trade, and grow as old as I am,—then only will the cannon-ball be getting near, then you may jump to one side! See, so great as that is the sun's distance!'" (K. Lange, Ueber Apperception, 1879, p. 76.)