CHAPTER SEVEN KNOWING: REPRESENTATION— ASSOCIATION, MEMORY, IMAGINATION Presentation is the power of the soul to take to itself knowledge from the outside world. Representation is the power to re-present, or reknow, such knowledge. In presentation, knowledge comes streaming into the soul, first into consciousness, then into subconsciousness. In rep resentation, the knowledge that flowed into subconsciousness is called back into consciousness. There are three types, or steps, of representation— association, memory and imagination. Association is the power of the soul to group mental materials and to link them together. Memory is the power to record, retain, recall and recognize past experiences. Imagination is the power to recall past experiences and combine them into new forms. I. ASSOCIATION 1. ANALYSIS Association (from the Latin ad-to, and sociareunite, cf. socius-companion) is a power, a process and a product. James (71) calls association the formation of friendships among ideas. Herbart calls the groups of related ideas apperception masses, and, in the words of the proverb, "a friend in need is a friend indeed." These apperception masses are like money in the bank on which you can draw whenever you are out of funds. Like sensation, association has a physical basis. In sensation an external stimulus aroused some nerve-end, and a message was promptly sent along the nerve to the brain center. The brain center has a sensory area, a motor area and an associational area. The incoming message first reaches the sensory area and becomes known as a sensation. From the sensory area an impulse goes by nerve fiber perhaps at once to the motor area, whence it is sent by outgoing nerves to the muscles, which respond by motor act. Or, maybe the impulse is not sent at once to the motor area. Maybe it is first directed by nerve fiber into the association area before it is permitted to reach the motor area. Suppose a man attacks you and strikes you with his fist. The message from the blow speeds to the brain and announces a sensation of pain. There should naturally be an immediate return blow, but, if the impulse to strike back has been shunted over to the associational lines, the chances are that there will be no return blow. Second thoughts are more complex and have more brain connections; first thoughts are more simple and run along a single fiber. The whole nervous system is one vast network of associated wires, and the whole body of a man's knowledge is complicated and interwoven. Even when we find no association between our ideas, we may be sure that asso ciations exist. Education consists partly in making many associations and partly in discovering the associations already existing. There is also a psychical basis for associations. And just as the physical basis of cerebral association may be found, within limitations, in the cells and connective fibers of the brain, so the psychical basis may be found. in the psychical nature of association. This nature can be stated in the form of laws of association. Among these laws are: Similarity and contrast, contiguity in time and place, and cause and effect. A tall man suggests either a tall man or the opposite. Christ and the Twelve are associated both as to time and place. Sin and death are as cause and effect. 2. CLASSIFICATION Classified as to time, associations are either simultaneous or successive. Simultaneous association is the orderly grouping of ideas or objects at the same time; successive association is the sequence of our ideas as they pass through the mind. Franklin associated lightning and electricity-this is an instance of simultaneous association. When the teacher mentions Franklin, a train of associated ideas follows, as: printer, statesman, philosopher, discoverer, electricity, telegraph, telephone, radio, etc.-this is an example of successive association. Classified as to laws by which they are formed, associations are either of similarity or contrast, contiguity of time or place, cause or effect. Classified as to consciousness, associations are either conscious or subconscious. The results are often about the same. Many problems are worked out in sleep. Forgotten knowledge, like the foundations of a building, is unseen, but is supporting that which is visible. 3. VALUE In the advance of knowledge, wholes are analyzed into parts and parts are brought together into wholes through association or synthesis. Analysis and synthesis are two alternating activities, a stroke of one preparing for a stroke of the other, much as, in walking, a man's two legs are alternately brought into use, both being indispensable for any orderly advance. Association is á valuable aid in perception, memory, imagination, thinking, and almost every other mental act. It is a source of pleasure, for it marshals into a compact army a lot of disconnected, and otherwise useless facts. It is a source of profit, for it gives a man command over inner relations, as, cause and effect, and gives him dominion over the world of thought and of nature. It is an invaluable help in outlining and classifying, and the man who can outline and classify is equipped with seven-league boots. Without associations our lives would be chaotic, a mere succession of unrelated experiences. The importance of association was appreciated as far back as Aristotle, but is was not until 1651 that the subject was explained at any length. This exposition was made by Thomas Hobbes in his "Leviathan." From his day the principle of association became so dominant in English psychology that for two centuries it was called Association Psychology. David Hume compared the law of association with that of gravitation. Ribot (72) says that "association is at the bottom of all our acts; it permits of no exception. Neither dream, revery, mystic ecstasy, nor the most abstract reasoning can exist without it. Its suppression would be equivalent to that of thought itself. Nevertheless, no ancient author understood it. The discovery came late and seems so simple that it may justly astonish us." II. MEMORY 1. ANALYSIS Memory (Latin, memoria) has already been defined as the power to record, retain, recall and recognize past experiences. It may also be defined as a process or a product. The process of recording is sometimes called memorizing or learning by heart. The process of retaining is called remembering. The process of recalling is called recollecting. The product of memory is often called idea. Modern psychology stresses the physical basis of memory. Memory, modernists say, is not a power of the soul, but of the brain (73); memory is nothing else than impressions made in the nerve and brain paths-as messages are carried from sense organs to brain centers. The pathways are broadened and deepened with every repeti Reasoning Association Perception Sensation Intuition Apperception Intellectual Sources of Memory Fig. 31. MEMORY tion of the experience in about the same way as the highways are affected by much traffic. The cortex, or gray outer covering of the brain, is a vast city of cells, millions of them, billions of them, like so many empty houses waiting for occupants. Each incoming sensation is assigned to one of these vacant houses. There, so to speak, the sensation will stay, in subconscious obscurity, until called upon. After a sensation has been revived in memory, after it has again been in the conscious field, it returns to its subconscious home in the cell-palace of the brain. There is no doubt much truth in the doctrine that memory has a physical basis, yet this theory as just outlined is too materialistic to be true. It can be used by way of illustration to show |
