ectual
states into apperceptive acts. I hear of a friend who has had
disasters in business and has lost his whole fortune. If I have never
experienced such difficulties myself, the chances are that the news
will not make a deep impression upon me. But if I have once gone
through the despondency of such a crushing defeat, sympathy for my
friend will be awakened, and I may feel his trouble almost as my own.
The meaning of such an item of news depends upon the response which it
finds in my own feelings. It is well known that those friends can best
sympathize with us in our trouble who have passed through the same
troubles. Even enemies are not lacking in sympathy with each other
when an appeal is made to deep feelings and experiences common to both.

The feeling of _interest_, which we have emphasized so much, is
chiefly, if not wholly, dependent upon apperceptive conditions. Select
a lesson adapted to the age and understanding of a child, present it in
such a way as to recall and make use of his previous experience, and
interest is certain to follow. The outcome of a successful act of
apperception is always a feeling of pleasure, or at least of interest.
When the principle of apperception is fully applied in teaching, the
progress from one point to another is so gradual and clear that it
gives pleasure. The clearness and understanding with which we receive
knowledge adds greatly to our interest in it. On the contrary, when
apperception is violated, and new knowledge is only half understood and
assimilated there can be but little feeling of satisfaction. "The
overcoming of certain difficulties, the accession of numerous ideas,
the success of the act of knowledge or recognition, the greater
clearness that the ideas have gained, awaken a feeling of pleasure. We
become conscious of the growth of our knowledge and power of
understanding. The significance of this new impression for our ego is
now more strongly felt than at the beginning or during the course of
the progress. To this pleasurable feeling is easily added the effort,
at favorable opportunity, to reproduce the product of the apperception,
to supplement and deepen it, to unite it to other ideas, and so further
to extend certain chains of thought. The summit or sum of these states
of mind we happily express with the word interest. For in reality the
feeling of self appears between the various stages of the process of
apperception (_inter esse_); with one