14. Chapter 14: His Use Apperception
Chapter 14 His Use Of Apperception In recently past time this term has been one to conjure with in educational theory. You might look up its story in an unabridged dictionary. Writers like Leibniz, Kant, Herbart, and Wundt use it in different senses. Its educational meaning is derived mainly from Herbart, and is easily grasped. It is this sense of the term that concerns us here. By apperception we mean the interpretation of the new in terms of the old. The familiar or old ideas which we have in mind are what we must use in understanding the new. The old modifies the new, and the new enlarges the old. Thus a reciprocal process goes on between the old and the new, in which, however, the old is usually more influential in modifying the new than the new is in enlarging the old. In those rare cases in which the new displaces the old and itself becomes central in shaping still other incoming new impressions, we have a kind of mental conversion.
These statements are abstract and perhaps not fully intelligible. An illustration will help. A boy had seen and learned from his mother what a convict was, the kind that wears black and white striped clothing and works on the road. He had also learned what a mule was. With these ideas in mind they visit the zoo, and the boy sees what we know as a zebra. But he called it a “convict-mule.” He was only interpreting the unknown in terms of the known. It is the best thing and the only thing we can do. An old colored laundress remarked on seeing a parade of Red Cross nurses: “Befo’ de Lawd, I nebber see so much white wash before in mah life!”
Roosevelt reported that as a boy he was afraid to go alone in a church building lest he should be eaten up by “the zeal of thine house.” A child hears sung the line of the old hymn: “The consecrated cross I’ll bear” and understands it as referring to “the consecrated cross-eyed bear!” So we know with what we have known. This is apperception. Can you give other examples?
Now it is only common sense in teaching so to state one’s views that they can easily connect up with what the class already has in mind. To fail to do so is not to be understood. To do so is to be both interesting and understood. The old Herbartian view was that the new should appeal to the old ideas, and this is still true, but the present view of Dewey, McMurry, and others is that the new should appeal to some present felt need or problem. Can you think of any views stated by Jesus that involve the working of the same principle? Not, of course, that he thought in terms of modern psychology. In this connection recall: “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear”; “To him that hath shall be given and he shall have abundance”; “Take heed how ye hear”; “Let him that readeth understand”; “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled”; ‘‘Remember that every Scribe well trained for the Kingdom of the Heavens is like a householder who brings out of his storehouse new things and old” (Matthew 13:52, Weymouth); “I came not to destroy, but to fulfill.” So he seems to have recognized the working of the principle. Can you recall instances of his use of apperception in his teaching?
Each one of the parables makes use of the more familiar to interpret the less familiar. To the woman at the well he speaks of “living water.” To those seeking a sign he refers to the “signs of the times” which they could not discern, though they could read the weather signs. When they told him his mother and brethren were standing without and would speak to him, he told them who his spiritual mother and brethren and sisters were. In justifying his disciples in plucking ears of corn on the Sabbath, he put their critics in mind of what David did and of what the priests do on the Sabbath day as the basis for apperceiving what the disciples did.
He puts his synagogue hearers in Nazareth in mind of the Messianic prophecy of Isaiah as the basis for understanding himself (Luke 4:16-30).
Succinctly he presents himself as “the bread of life,” as “the light of the world.”
Yet he was not received. John records that he came unto his own and his own received him not. He explains it by saying that darkness cannot understand light. “The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness apprehended it not” (John 1:5). It was a case of failure to apperceive. The main reason was that to the Jews the expected
Messiah was a temporal deliverer, while Jesus taught that his kingdom was spiritual. In vain he tried to show them that the Messiah was David’s lord, and so spiritual, and not necessarily his son, and so temporal. They could not see it so. Their mental eyes were blinded by their own prepossessions. Even the disciples after the resurrection were still earth-bound enough to ask: “Lord, dost thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6.) So Jerusalem could not recognize the day of its visitation, the tragedy of which, brought the tears from his eyes.
Perhaps Jesus’ recognition of the absence of an apperceptive basis is clearest in his figurative portrayal of why his disciples, unlike John’s, did not fast. The asceticism of John was not the standpoint from which to understand the festival character of the kingdom. “No one tears a piece from a new garment to mend an old one. If he did, he would not only spoil the new, but the patch from the new would not match the old. Nor does anybody pour new wine into old wine-skins. If he did, the new wine would burst the skins, the wine itself would be spilt, and the skins be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wine-skins. Nor does any one after drinking old wine wish for new; for he says, ‘The old is better’” (Luke 5:36-39, Weymouth). In this Jesus says plainly that the Baptist is not the apperceptive basis from which to understand the Kingdom.
Jesus desired and labored to be himself apperceived by his countrymen for what he took himself to be, but it could not be. His thoughts were not their thoughts. As
Stanley Hall writes: “The whole of life had to be reconstructed and brought under the light of new apperceptive centers in order to bring fitness to enter his Kingdom.” Only a few illustrations of his use of apperception were cited. Can you add others? A useful, though prolix, work on this topic is Lange’s “Apperception.”