s in the region of his home. An
old hill and castle looking toward the plain and the sea were his Troy.
The stream flowing through the plain was the Simois. The places of
famous conflicts between the Trojans and Greeks were located. So vivid
were the pictures which these home scenes gave to the child, that years
later in visiting Asia Minor and the sight of the real Troy, he was not
so deeply impressed as in his boyhood. A _German professor_ relates
that he and his companions, while reading the Indian stories of Cooper,
located the important scenes in the hills and valleys about Eisenach in
the Thuringian mountains. Many other illustrations of the same
imaginative tendency to substitute home objects for foreign ones are
given. But whether or not this experience is true of us all, it is
certain that we can form no idea of foreign places and events except as
we _construct_ the pictures out of the _fragments_ of things that we
have known. What we have seen of rivers, lands, and cities must form
the materials for picturing to ourselves distant places.

Since the old ideas have so much to do with the proper reception of the
new, let us examine more closely the _interaction_ of the two. If a
_new idea_ drops into the mind, like a stone upon the surface of the
water, it produces a commotion. It acts as a stimulus or wakener to
the old ideas sleeping beneath the surface. It draws them up above the
surface-level; that is, into consciousness. But what ideas are thus
disturbed? There are thousands of these latent ideas, embryonic
thoughts, beneath the surface. Those which possess sufficient kinship
to this new-comer to hear his call, respond. For in the mind "birds of
a feather flock together." Ideas and thoughts which resemble the new
one answer, the others sleep on undisturbed, except a few who are so
intimately associated with these kinsmen as to be disturbed when they
are disturbed. Or, to state it differently, certain thought-groups or
complexes, which contain elements kindred to the new notion, are
agitated and raised into conscious thought. They seem to respond to
their names. The new idea may continue for some time to stimulate and
agitate. There appears to be a sort of telegraphic inquiry through the
regions of the mind to find out where the kindred dwell. The distant
relatives and strangers (the unrelated or unserviceable ideas) soon
discover that they have responded to the wrong call and drop back to