1. Associations in all their forms and also the closely related processes of fusion that give rise to psychical compounds, are regarded by us as passive experiences, because the feeling of activity, which is characteristic for all processes of volition and attention, never appears except inconnection with the apperception of the completed product, presented as a result of the combination (cf. p. 217). Associations are, accordingly, processes that can arouse volitions, [p. 249] but are not themselves directly influenced by volitions.
This is, however, the criterion of a passive process.
The case is essentially different with the second kind of combinations that are formed between different psychical compounds and their elements, the apperceptive combinations. Here the feeling of activity with its accompanying variable sensations of tension does not merely follow the combinations as an after-effect produced by them, but it precedes them so that the combinations themselves are immediately recognized as formed with the aid of the attention. In this sense they are called active experiences.
2. Apperceptive combinations include a large number of psychical processes that are distinguished in popular parlance under the general terms thinking, reflection, imagination, understanding, etc. These are all regarded as higher psychical processes than sense-perceptions or pure memory-processes, still, they axe all looked upon as different from one another. Especially is this true of the so-called functions of imagination and understanding. In contrast with this loose view of popular psychology and of the faculty-theory, which followed in its tracks, association-psychology sought to find a unitary principle by subsuming the apperceptive combinations of ideas also under the general concept of association, at the same time limiting the concept, as noted above (p. 224), to successive association.
This reduction to association was effected either by neglecting the essential subjective and objective distinguishing marks of apperceptive combinations, or by attempting to avoid the difficulties of an explanation, through the introduction of certain supplementary concepts taken from popular psychology.
Thus, "interest" or "intelligence" was credited with an influence on associations.
Very often this view was based on the erroneous notion that the recognition of certain distinguishing features in apperceptive combinations [p. 250] and associations meant the assertion of an absolute independence of the former from the latter. Of course, this is not true. All psychical processes are connected with associations as much as with the original sense-perceptions.
Yet, just m associations always form a part of every sense-perception and in spite of that appear in memory-processes as relatively independent processes, so apperceptive combinations are based,entirely on associations, but their essential attributes are not traceable to these associations.
3. If we try to account for the essential attributes of apperceptive combinations, we may first of all divide the psychical processes that belong to this class into simple and complex apperceptive functions. The simple functions are those of relating and comparing, the complex those of synthesis and analysis . A. SIMPLE APPERCEPTIVE FUNCTIONS. (Relating and Comparing.)
4. The most elementary apperceptive function is the relating of two psychical contents to each other. The grounds for such relating is always given in the single psychical compounds and their associations, but the actual carrying out of the process itself is a apperceptive activity through, which the relation itself assumes a special conscious content distinct from the contents which are related, though indeed inseparably connected with them. For example, when we recognize the identity of an object with one perceived before, or when we are conscious of a definite relation between a remembered event and a present impression, there is in both cases a relating apperceptive activity connected with the associations.
So long as the recognition remains a pure association, the process of relating is limited to the feeling of familiarity that [p. 251] follows the assimilation of the new impression either immediately or after a short interval. When, on the contrary, apperception is added to association, this feeling is supplied with a clearly recognized ideational substratum. The earlier perception and the new impression are separated in time and then brought into a relation of identity on the basis of their essential attributes. The case is similar when we are conscious of the motives of a memory-act. This also presupposes that a comparison of the memory-image with the impression that occasioned it, be added to the merely associative process which gave rise to the image. This, again, is a process that can be brought about only through active attention.