nd teachers should find in it a
constant antidote to faulty methods.

Apperception may be roughly defined at first as the process of
_acquiring new ideas by the aid of old ideas_ already in the mind. It
makes the acquisition of new knowledge easier and quicker. Not that
there is any easy road to learning, but there is a natural process
which greatly accelerates the progress of acquisition, just as it is
better to follow a highway over a rough country than to betake one's
self to the stumps and brush. For example, if one is familiar with
peaches, apricots will be quickly understood as a kindred kind of
fruit, even though a little strange. A person who is familiar with
electrical machinery will easily interpret the meaning and purpose of
every part of a new electrical plant. One may _perceive_ a new object
without understanding it, but to _apperceive_ it is to interpret its
meaning by the aid of similar familiar notions.

If one examines a _typewriter_ for the first time, it will take some
pains and effort to understand its construction and use; but after
examining a Remington, another kind will be more easily understood,
because the principle of the first interprets that of the second.
Suppose the _Steppes of Russia_ are mentioned for the first time to a
class. The word has little or no meaning or perhaps suggests
erroneously a succession of stairs. But we remark that the steppes are
like the prairies and plains to the west of the Mississippi river,
covered with grass and fed on by herds. By awakening a familiar notion
already in the mind and bringing it distinctly to the front, the new
thing is easily understood. Again, a boy goes to town and sees a
_banana_ for the first time, and asks, "What is that? I never saw
anything like that." He thinks he has no class of things to which it
belongs, no place to put it. His father answers that it is to eat like
an orange or a pear, and its significance is at once plain by the
reference to something familiar.

Again, two men, the one a _machinist_ and the other an observer
unskilled in machines, visit the machinery hall of an exposition. The
machinist observes a new invention and finds in it a new application of
an old principle. As he passes along from one machine to another he is
much interested in noting new devices and novel appliances and at the
end of an hour he leaves the hall with a mind enriched. The other
observer sees the same machines and their parts,