erception.

XIV. APPERCEPTION

'Apperception' is a word which cuts a great figure in the pedagogics of
the present day. Read, for example, this advertisement of a certain
text-book, which I take from an educational journal:--

#WHAT IS APPERCEPTION?#

For an explanation of Apperception see Blank's PSYCHOLOGY,
Vol. ---- of the ---- Education Series, just published.

The difference between Perception and Apperception is
explained for the teacher in the preface to Blank's
PSYCHOLOGY.

Many teachers are inquiring, "What is the meaning of
Apperception in educational psychology?" Just the book for
them is Blank's PSYCHOLOGY in which the idea was first
expounded.

The most important idea in educational psychology is
Apperception. The teacher may find this expounded in Blank's
PSYCHOLOGY. The idea of Apperception is making a revolution
in educational methods in Germany. It is explained in Blank's
PSYCHOLOGY, Vol. ---- of the ---- Education Series, just
published.

Blank's PSYCHOLOGY will be mailed prepaid to any address on
receipt of $1.00.

Such an advertisement is in sober earnest a disgrace to all concerned;
and such talk as it indulges in is the sort of thing I had in view when
I said at our first meeting that the teachers were suffering at the
present day from a certain industrious mystification on the part of
editors and publishers. Perhaps the word 'apperception' flourished in
their eyes and ears as it nowadays often is, embodies as much of this
mystification as any other single thing. The conscientious young teacher
is led to believe that it contains a recondite and portentous secret, by
losing the true inwardness of which her whole career may be shattered.
And yet, when she turns to the books and reads about it, it seems so
trivial and commonplace a matter,--meaning nothing more than the manner
in which we receive a thing into our minds,--that she fears she must
have missed the point through the shallowness of her intelligence, and
goes about thereafter afflicted with a sense either of uncertainty or of
stupidity, and in each case remaining mortified at being so inadequate
to her mission.

Now apperception is an extremely useful word in pedagogics, and offers a
convenient name for a process to which every teacher must frequently
refer. But it verily means nothing more than the act of taking a thing
into th