Experience

(b) Outline to Detail, Implicit to Explicit Apprehension. —It is the broader and larger characters of a whole which first receive attention, but "broader" and "larger" must be interpreted in a psychological sense. It is not what is "objectively" largest that is first to be perceived. Proverbially, the wood may not be apprehended for the trees. The point is rather that attention is first attracted by certain convenient wholes (and convenience is relative to development) which unite within themselves a number of components which escape explicit discrimination, and it is as units in such wholes that they are subsequently known. But before discrimination they are not wholly unknown. The whole appears different on account of their existence. Hence they may be said to be implicitly apprehended. Thus in noting a "certain strange ness" about my friend I have implicitly apprehended that he is growing a moustache before I have "located" where the strange ness resides.

Even when the items of a whole are singled out by attention, the characteristics they possess are conditioned by their context. This fact is strikingly illustrated in many familiar illusions. In general, cognitive development does not proceed simply by accre tions and associations. If an analogy be required it will be found rather in the emergence of structure in an organism rather than in the growth of a snowball or a crystal.

(c) Progressive Determination.

The original apprehension of any object is characterised by "vagueness." What is given is given to be determined, to be rendered determinate. What exists must be in its own intrinsic nature perfectly determinate, whether it be a sense-presentation or a physical thing, but as apprehended it is originally and probably always more or less vague. We per ceive a thing as of a "reddish hue" and as more or less angular in shape before we apprehend it to be a perfectly determinate shade of red, and of such and such determinate angles. In the same way it is possible to be aware of something moving when we know neither what it is that is moving nor in what direction it goes.

(d) Extension of Temporal Range.

As we proceed from the lower to the higher forms of cognition we observe a further characteristic, one that is not involved in the example which we have so far had before us,—the extension of temporal range.

Primitive experience, there are good (though indirect) reasons to suppose, is limited in reference to the present, conceived not, of course, as a point in time, but as a short duration, involving a retrospective and a prospective phase. Just as, in general, cogni tion refers beyond the limits of actual sense experience, so it refers directly to the future and the past. In this sense expecta tion and memory are original capacities of the mind. Develop ment consists in the gradual extension of range, though how far such immediate reference may extend is difficult to decide. Cer tainly not so far as instinctive pre-adaptation might lead one to suppose. Instinctive action involves prospective cognition, but probably only a step or two ahead, and in much that passes for memory we only directly know that this is what has previously been recalled.

Apart from the extension of immediate cognitive range refer ence to past or future depends upon the emergence of "free ideas."

Retention.—Advance in mental life depends upon the fact that the effects of past experience are retained and carried f or ward into subsequent experience. The law may be simply ex pressed by saying that every experience in part owes its specific character to prior experience, and modifies in turn the nature of that which follows. Increasing familiarity in cognition and pro gressive facilitation in behaviour are the obvious results. It is important, however, to distinguish the effects of retention at the purely perceptual level from those which arise from association of potentially "free" ideas. Mental imagery, in its present form is a comparatively late development and cognitive development has proceeded far before it is acquired.

In its qualitative aspect the general results of retention are to be found even in the case of the repeated presentation of a comparatively simple object which does not admit of internal differentiation—say in the successive strokes of a clock. Here the physical occurrences are identical in nature, but the succes sive presentations vary in a systematic way. The case may be symbolised as follows :— where o stands for the physical occurrence, p for the correspond ing presentation and the subscripts m1 and for the peculiar modifications which distinguish the more or less familiar from the novel.

The case may be compared with that in which the successive presentations are originally various in nature, as say in the suc cessive notes of a melody. Here the effects of retention do not modify an experience which would otherwise be identical with what had gone before, but blend in a curious way with the features of a novel presentation. The case here can be represented:— a b c standing for the physical occurrences, pa . . . Pb m, • • • PC m, corresponding presentations, and again denoting the modifications due to retention. The question is what precisely is the nature of these modifications? The process has been described as one of "acquirement of mean ing." The later strokes of the clock have acquired a meaning which the initial experience lacked. The meaning of a presentation depends upon its place within a whole. What, then, we may ask, is meaning? Meaning.—At a relatively developed level of mental life mean ing may be conveyed by an associated image. I hear a word in a foreign language which I do not understand ; it is devoid of meaning. The object to which it refers is pointed out. Thereafter the word being repeated an image of the object may be revived. This will then convey for me the meaning of the word. In this sense meaning depends upon associated context. But this is not its most primitive form. The kitten on its second encounter with a dog has neither the time nor the inclination to call up a mental picture of its earlier adventure, but the present impression is "charged with meaning." Meaning might here appear to consist in the altered intrinsic nature of the sense-presentation, yet this cannot be the case. No change merely in quality, intensity, extensity and duration can constitute a meaning though no doubt such changes will concur rently occur.