Part 10 (2/2)

WE SHOULD CARRY OUR IDEALS INTO ACTION--The best training for the i about is that to be obtained by taking our ownour own structure It is true that it will help to look through other people's houses enough to discover their style of building: we should read But just as it is not necessary for us to put in all the ti doll houses and Chinese paGodas, so it is not best for us to get all our notions of iet good training for the i the history of the primitive Indian tribes The pictures in ”sobund” are full of suggestion for the iland

But even with the best ofWe must construct stories for ourselves, must work out plots for our own stories; we must have time to meditate and plan and build, not idly in the daydreaes real by _carrying them out in activity_, if they are of such a character that this is possible; we must build our ideals and work to them in the common course of our everyday life; wethe thinking of others; we must _initiate_ as well as imitate

5 PROBLEMS FOR OBSERVATION AND INTROSPECTION

1 Explain the cause and the re:

Children who defined ht said that the factory sht up” and the mountain did not

Children often think of the horizon as fastened to the earth

Islands are thought of as floating on the water

2 Hoould you stiination of a child who does not seeraphy, etc? Is it possible that such inability may come froes?

3 Classify the school subjects, including do, as to their ability to train (1) reproductive and (2) creative iination

4 Do you ever skip the descriptive parts of a book and read the narrative? As you read the description of a bit of natural scenery, does it rise before you? As you study the description of a battle, can you see the movements of the troops?

5 Have you ever planned a house as you think you would like it? Can you see it from all sides? Can you see all the roos?

6 What plans and ideals have you for? Can you describe the process by which your plans or ideals change? Do you ever try to put yourself in the other person's place?

7 Take soination has constructed and see whether you can select from it familiar elements froination in the co to iination?

CHAPTER X

assOCIATION

Whence caht that occupies you this moment, and what determines the next that is to follow? Introspection reveals no hts move in a connected and orderly array and not in a hit-and- the strea each other at rando current, now this one ahead, now that On the contrary, our thoughts come, one after the other, as they are beckoned or _caused_ The thought now in the focal point of your consciousness appeared because it sprouted out of the one just preceding it; and the present thought, before it departs, will determine its successor and lead it upon the scene This is to say that our thought stream possesses not only a continuity, but also a _unity_; it has coherence and system This coherence and systeht about by what the psychologist calls _association_

1 THE NATURE OF assOCIATION

Weour thoughts to form such a system of bonds with each other that the objects of consciousness are vitally connected both (1) as they exist at any given moment, and (2) as they occur in succession in the mental stream

THE NEURAL BASIS OF assOCIATION--The association of thoughts--ideas, ies, memory--or of a situation with its response, rests primarily on a neural basis association is the result of habit working in neurone groups Its fundamental law is stated by James as follows: ”When two eleether or in i, tends to propagate its excitement into the other” This is but a technical statement of the simple fact that nerve currents flow most easily over the neurone connections that they have already used

It is hard to teach an old dog new tricks, because the old tricks employ familiar, much-used neural paths, while new tricks require the connecting up of groups of neurones not in the habit of working together; and the flow of nerve energy istogether One who learns to speak a foreign language late in life never attains the facility and ease that e This is because the neural paths for speech are already set for his e, the new paths are hard to establish

The connections between the various brain areas, or groups of neurones, are, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, accomplished by means of _association fibers_ This function requires millions of neurones, which unite every part of the cortex with every other part, thuson in any particular center to extend to any other center whatsoever In the relatively unripe brain of the child, the association fibers have not yet set up ins is determined chiefly by the develop about recall The , which requires many different associative connections, is impossible prior to the existence of adequate neural development It is this fact thatchildren the rammar, or other subjects They are not yet equipped with the requisite brain rasp the necessary associations

[Illustration: FIG 18--Diagrammatic scheme of association, in which V stands for the visual, A for the auditory, G for the gustatory, M for thecenters of the cortex]

assOCIATION THE BASIS OF MEMORY--Without the machinery and processes of association we could have no memory Let us see in a simple illustration how association works in recall Suppose you are passing an orchard and see a tree loaded with te apples You hesitate, then cli the owner's dog bark as you leave the place The accohly the centers of the cortex which were involved in the act, and the association fibers which connect the 18) Now let us see how you h association Let us suppose that a week later you are seated at your dining table, and that you begin to eat an apple whose flavor reminds you of the one which you plucked from the tree From this start how may the entire circumstance be recalled? Reht of the apple tree, with our thoughts about it, with ourbark, were all active together with the taste center, and hence tend to be thrown into activity again froet a visual iustatory-visual association fibers; (2) the thoughts, emotions, or deliberations which we had on the forustatory-thought neurones; (3) wethe fence and picking the apple froet an auditory iustatory-auditory fibers Indeed, we are _sure_ to get some one or more of these unless the paths are blocked in some way, or our attention leads off in some other direction