aster by analysing it into its component parts and
recombining the analysed parts into a better known whole.

=Analysis Depends upon Selection.=--It is not in the above sense,
however, that the term analysis is to be applied in the learning
process. It is not true, for instance, when a person is presented with a
strange object, say an _ornithorhynchus_, and realizes it in only a
vague way, that any mere analysis of the object will discover for him
the various characteristics which are to synthesize into a knowledge of
the animal. This would imply that in analysis the mind merely breaks up
a vaguely known whole in order to make of it a definitely known whole.
But the learner could not discover the characteristics of such an object
unless the mind attended to it with certain elements of its former
experiences. Unless, for instance, the person already knew certain
characteristics of both birds and animals, he could not interpret the
ornithorhynchus as a bird-beaked animal. In the case of the child and
the mud-turtle, also, there could have been no analysis of the problem
in the way referred to, had the child not had the ideas, bug and basket,
as elements of former experience. These characteristics, therefore,
which enter into a definite knowledge of the object, do not come out of
the object by a mere mechanical process of analysis, but are rather read
into the object by the apperceptive process. That is, the learner does
not get his new experience directly out of the presented materials, but
builds up his new experience out of elements of his former knowledge. In
other words, the learner sees in the new object, or problem, only such
characteristics as his former knowledge and interest enable him to see.
Thus while the learner may be said from one standpoint to analyse the
new problem, this is possible only because he is able to break up, or
analyse, his former experience and read certain of its elements into the
new presentation. To say that the mind analyses the unknown object, or
topic, in any other sense, would be to confound mental interpretation
with physical analysis.

=A Further Example.=--The following example will further show that the
learner can analyse a presented problem only to the extent that he is
able to put characteristics into it by this process of analysing or
selecting from his past experience. Consider how a young child gains his
knowledge of a triangle. At first his control of certain sensations
ena