The Story of the Mind | Page 7

already reached. The passing of the mental states has been likened
to a stream which flows on from moment to moment with no breaks. It

is so continuous that we can never say: "I will start afresh, forget the
past, and be uninfluenced by my history." However we may wish this,
we can never do it; for the oncoming current of the stream is just what
we speak of as ourselves, and we can not avoid bringing the memories,
imaginations, expectations, disappointments, etc., up to the present. So
the effect which any new event or experience, happening for the first
time, is to have upon us depends upon the way it fits into the current of
these onflowing influences. The man I see for the first time may be so
neutral to me that I pass him unregarded. But let him return after I have
once remarked him, or let him resemble a man whom I know, or let
him give me some reason to observe, fear, revere, think of him in any
way, then he is a positive factor in my stream. He has been taken up
into the flow of my mental life, and he henceforth contributes
something to it.
For example, a little child, after learning to draw a man's face, with two
eyes, the nose and mouth, and one ear on each side, will afterward,
when told to draw a profile, still put in two eyes and affix an ear to each
side. The drift of mental habit tells on the new result and he can not
escape it.
He will still put in the two eyes and two ears when he has before him a
copy showing only one ear and neither eye.
In all such cases the new is said to be Assimilated to the old. The
customary figure for man in the child's memory assimilates the
materials of the new copy set before him.
Now this tendency is universal. The mind must assimilate its new
material as much as possible, thus making the old stand for the new.
Otherwise there would be no containing the fragmentary details which
we should have to remember and handle. Furthermore, it is through this
tendency that we go on to form the great classes of objects--such as
man, animal, virtue--into which numbers of similar details are put, and
which we call General Notions or Concepts.
We may understand by Assimilation, therefore, the general tendency of
new experiences to be treated by us in the ways which similar material

has been treated before, with the result that the mind proceeds from the
particular case to the general class.
Summing up our outcome so far, we find that general psychology has
reached three great principles in its investigation of knowledge. First,
we have the combining tendency of the mind, the grouping together
and relating of mental states and of things, called Apperception. Then,
second, there are the particular relations established among the various
states, etc., which are combined; these are called Associations of Ideas.
And, third, there is the tendency of the mind to use its old experiences
and habits as general patterns or nets for the sorting out and distributing
of all the new details of daily life; this is called Assimilation.
II. Let us now turn to the second great aspect of the mind, as general or
introspective psychology considers it, the aspect which presents itself
in Action or conduct. The fact that we act is of course as important as
the fact that we think or the fact that we feel; and the distinction which
separates thought and action should not be made too sharp.
Yet there is a distinction. To understand action we must again go to
introspection. This comes out as soon as we ask how we reach our
knowledge of the actions of others. Of course, we say at once that we
see them. And that is true; we do see them, while as to their thoughts
we only infer them from what we see of their action. But, on the other
hand, we may ask: How do we come to infer this or that thought from
this or that action of another? The only reply is: Because when we act
in the same way this is the way we feel. So we get back in any case to
our own consciousness and must ask how is this action related to this
thought in our own mind.
To this question psychology has now a general answer: Our action is
always the result of our thought, of the elements of knowledge which
are at the time present in the mind. Of course, there are actions which
we do from purely nervous reasons. These are the Instincts, which
come up again when we consider the animals. But