nizing them into
new knowledge. This need for the pupil to direct mental effort, or
attention, upon the problem in order to bring upon it, out of his former
knowledge, the ideas relative to the solution of the question before
him, is one of the most important laws of method. From the standpoint of
the teacher, this law demands that he so direct the process of learning
that the pupil will clearly call up in consciousness the selected
interpreting ideas as portions of his old knowledge, and further feel a
connection between these and the new problem before him.

=Learner's Experience Analysed.=--The second stage of the learning
process is found to involve also a breaking up of former experience.
This appears in the fact that the various ideas which are necessary to
interpret the new problem are to be selected out of larger complexes of
past experience. For example, in a lesson whose problem is to account
for the lack of rainfall in the Sahara desert, the pupil may have a
complex of experiences regarding the position of the desert. Out of this
mass of experience he must, however, select the one feature--its
position in relation to the equator. In the same way, he may have a
whole body of experience regarding the winds of Africa. This body must,
however, be analysed, and the attention fixed upon the North-east
trade-wind. Again, he may know many things about these winds, but here
he selects out the single item of their coming from a land source.
Again, from the complex of old knowledge which he possesses regarding
the land area from which the wind blows, he must analyse out its
temperature, and compare it with that of the areas toward which the wind
is blowing. Thus it will be seen that, step by step, the special items
of old knowledge to be used in the apperceptive process are selected out
of larger masses of experience. For this reason this phase of the
learning process is frequently designated as a process of analysis.

=Problem as Object of Analysis.=--Although the second step of the
learning process has been described as a selecting of elements from past
experience, it might be supposed that the various elements which the
mind has been said to select from its former experiences to interpret
the new problem, come in a sense from the presentation itself. Thus it
is often said, in describing the present step in the learning process,
that the presentation embodies a certain aggregate of experience, which
the learner can m