Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/193

 180 A. BAIN : ception, everything that Wundt advances is supported by our experience. The will may make up, in some small degree, for the feebleness of a contiguous linking, partly by a more strenuous attention, but far more by the search for collateral links in aid. It may likewise favour the recall of a resembling image. But neither of those two cases represents its habitual and all-powerful efficacy ; in both, the limits of its reproductive force are still narrow. The operation that represents Wundt's Apperception in its full sweep is that crowning example of voluntary power the command of the thoughts, by detaining some and dismissing others, as they arise, and are found suitable, or the contrary. Too much cannot be said as to the importance of voluntary atten- tion in this lofty sphere. All thinking for an end, whether it be practical or speculative, scientific or aesthetic, consists in availing ourselves of the materials afforded by association, and choosing or rejecting according to the perceived fitness or unfitness for that end. When, therefore, Wundt says that association alone does not explain the higher intellectual functions, he only says what we all admit, namely, that Association needs the control of will and feelings, in order to bring forth our more important thinking products. In the absence of some de- gree of conscious intensity, association can no more unite ideas, or restore the past by virtue of such unions, than a complete set of water-pipes can distribute water without a full reservoir to draw from. The scheme of Wundt does not lead to the slighting of Association as a great intellectual factor. His Apperception would be nothing without it. The point where my disagreement with the whole specu- lation now adduced begins, is the drawing of a hard and fast line between the lower and the higher workings of Associa- tion. To me the word Apperception, as employed by Wundt, is unnecessary and unmeaning. All that it is intended to convey is much better expressed by our old phraseology. If it is another name for the voluntary control of the thoughts it is superfluous and therefore mischievous. It leads us to suppose that there must be some distinct meaning to corre- spond, arid we find there is no such meaning. There is an important line between the random course of the thoughts, in reverie, in dreaming, in insanity, and even in the sane when they give way to casual associating that has no end and the regulated thinking of a well-trained mind ; but this line can be drawn much better by our old familiar phraseology than by the new coinage, as proposed by Professor Wundt. A far more serious ground of difference of opinion is the