world through my ideas of goodness or fulness that correspond
to these ideas. They have some of the qualities the ideas embrace; and
so I point them out and say, "This represents purity; that, impurity";
or, "This is full, that is empty." One satisfies my concept of purity,
while the other does not. One fulfils my concept of fulness; the other
does not. And because we can never point out any one quality in the
outside world and say "This is purity, and all of purity; this is
goodness; or this good plus this good plus this makes all of goodness";
because of this impossibility we speak of these concepts as having
reality somewhere. They are _absolutes_, _universals_, _abstract quality
concepts_--the unfound all of which the things we call pure and good are
but the part.

_Apperception_ is the process of comparing the new with all that is in
the mind, and of classifying it by its likeness to something already
there.

With an abstract idea of an object in mind we very deftly, through the
use of memory and constructive imagination, deduce the whole from the
part recognized as familiar.

Example: In walking through the field, along the bank of the brook, I
glimpse under the low-hanging branches of the weeping willow a
restlessly moving hoof. I see a certain kind of hoof and only that. Or I
hear a lowing sound. And I say "cow." I have not seen a cow, but only a
part which tells me a cow is there; for all the cows I ever saw had
hoofs of that general description, and so it fits into my concept _cow_,
and into no others. Or I have heard cows, only, give that lowing sound
before. From my perception, then, of hoof or sound I apperceive _cow_.
Memory relates that hoof or that lowing sound to a certain kind of
animal known in the past; and constructive imagination draws in all the
rest of the picture that belongs with it.

Again, we may apperceive an object or quality from our recognition of
something which in our experience has been associated, under those
particular circumstances, with only that object or quality. I see smoke
on the ocean's far horizon, and I decide instantly, "a steamer." I have
not perceived any steamer, but only something that "goes with it," as it
were. I see the ship with my mind, not with my eyes; for I know that a
cloud of smoke out there always has, in my past experience, represented
just that. I compare the newly appearing stimulus--smoke in that
particular location--with all that is associated with i