Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/189

 176 A. BAIN : merely a kind of germ of volition. In apperceptive com- bination, however, association is still at work. The apper- ceptive activity makes use of the material furnished to it by association ; but the laws of Association indicate only the possible combinations that are at the disposal of conscious- ness ; what combination is actually earned out is decided by the act of apperception. As direct sense-excitation furnishes consciousness with all its materials, so association preserves sense-impressions to be acted on by apperception. We may thus distinguish " passive apperception " (determined by stimuli, &c.) from " active apperception" (determined by an act of choice). It is this last alone that properly deserves the name. The laws of Association are most easily observed when apper- ception is passive ; the laws of the apperceptive activity itself, when it is active. The distinction applies to succes- sive as well as to simultaneous groupings of representa- tions. Memory provides consciousness with materials by holding representations in an associative bond ; recollection is the act of apperception that decides which of the associative representations shall actually come into the view-point of consciousness. In following out the detailed illustration of the foregoing positions, Wundt presents us with a two-fold classification of thought-combinations the simultaneous and the successive. Under the first falls the formation of concepts, which will suffice as an example of his proceeding. A concept, he says, is a single representation that stands in the place of a num- ber of other representations of its kind ; in other words, that is " apperceived " as standing for a whole class of represen- tations. The formation of concepts is specially related to "assimilative" associations. Concepts do not result (as associationists have tried to show) from the dropping of all but the common elements in a number of representations, but from the voluntary selection of some specially striking element, which may not be common, or may not be charac- teristic. Thus the concept may be defined " according to its psychological origin," as " the completed fusion, through active apperception, of a ruling individual representation with a series of representations that belong together ". Afterwards there occur the following additional changes (1) obscuration of the representations bound up with the dominant element ; (2) obscuration of the dominant element itself, and substitution of the spoken, together with the written, word. It is under " successive thought-combinations " that pro-