APPERCEPTION, a psychological term referring to higher consciousness. Until re cently there has been considerable confusion among English and American writers on psy chology as to the meaning of the terms percep tion and apperception. To point out the source of this confusion requires a brief history of the term apperception. The word was first used by Leibnitz in connection with his philosophy of uwindowlese' monads. With him every human soul is a monad which develops by an immer unfolding. When this development reaches the point of clear self-conscious being it attains what he calls apperceptive consciousness. If, on the other hand, the development is only par tial, if its states are vague and only partially self-conscious, the monad has attained the level of perceptive consciousness. Thus for Leibnitz the terms perception and apperception designated simply different degrees of clearness and dis tinctness of consciousness, with no reference whatever to the apprehension of external things. In fact the theory of Leibnitz rendered any such use of the terms impossible. In more recent German psychology the term perception has been dropped and that of apperception re tained as an expression of all the higher forms of clear consciousness. There is, however, one important exception to this. Wundt has re tained both terms and attempted to restore to them their Leibnitzian meaning without, of course, committing himself to Leibnitzian monad'ology. Mental processes which are clear and distinct and are also under the control of volition are called by Wundt processes of ap perception. But when the mental act is merely association in character and not directly con trolled by volition, or when it is obscure, Wundt calls it an act of perception.
The philosophy of Herbart doubtless, more than that of any other German writer, has brought the term apperception into prominence in American psychology. If we consider his system we shall find that here again the terms perception and apperception mark different de grees of clearness and completeness of the forms of mental activity. With Herbart all mental are but the interactions of ideas. When a new idea enters the mind it causes a connection among the ideas already present. It disturbs the equilibrium. It is welcomed by the ideas akin to it, and opposed by those which are not. When it finally be comes adjusted and settled into its proper posi tion among pre-existing ideas the new relation thus brought about is the result of apperception. Coming over to English and American psychol ogy we meet with that difficulty and confusion referred to above. This confusion had its origin in the fact that in translating the Leib nitzian terms perception and apperception into English these same identical terms were used, regardless of the fact that in our psychology we had already a term, perception, which had ac quired a fixed and definite meaning. The Eng
lish word already in use stood for the recogni tion of objects through the senses, and this is still its meaning. Hence it stands for the clear and self-conscious recognition of things as well as the vague and imperfect apprehension of them. The term perception brought over from German psychology, and the same word already in use, thus stood for widely different mean ings, and hence the confusion. The Germans have a wholly different word (Wakrnehmung) for what we mean by perception, and conse quently they cannot understand our difficulty. The result is that we have all along used the terms and apperception as though they distinguished wholly different mental ac tivities instead of marking only different de grees of the same processes, as they actually do. Apperception is only clear and self-con scious perception. It involves in a highly complex way the various mental processes of memory, imagination, judging, inferring, etc., when these processes are clear and self-con scious. A full treatment of apperception there fore requires that these processes be taken into account. It is only necessary here to indi cate briefly something of the pedagogical bear ing and value of the term. Mainly through the influence of the so-called Herbartian move ment in America, this term apperception has centred attention upon, and emphasized the importance of, the processes involved and the conditions requisite for the successful acquisi tion and assimilation of new knowledge with that which has already been learned. As the bodily organism separates and assimilates only such elements of the food taken into it as are needed for its growth and repair, so in a some what similar manner does the mind select and appropriate only such of its presentations as manifest a certain kinship to what is already consciously and vitally present, and rejects the rest. Elements wholly foreign to the mind's present stock of ideas escape it altogether. We must therefore learn the new by means of the old. Hence before presenting the new it is necessary to call up and make alive, by arous ing interest and curiosity, those ideas and ma terials of knowledge that by similarity or other bond or relation will best serve for the ready reception and complete assimilation of the truth or fact to be taught. The goal of intellectual development is mainly the acquisition of clear, distinct and adequate general conceptions, and the ability to make correct application of these to new particulars as they arise, or to see in each new fact the old in disguise.