to explain to a little girl what was meant by ‘the passive voice’:  “Suppose that you kill me:  you who do the killing are in the active voice, and I, who am killed, am in the passive voice.”  “But how can you speak if you’re killed?” said the child.  “Oh, well, you may suppose that I am not yet quite dead!” The next day the child was asked, in class, to explain the passive voice, and said, “It’s the kind of voice you speak with when you ain’t quite dead.”

In such a case as this the illustration ought to have been more varied.  Every one’s memory will probably furnish examples of the fantastic meaning which their childhood attached to certain verbal statements (in poetry often), and which their elders, not having any reason to suspect, never corrected.  I remember being greatly moved emotionally at the age of eight by the ballad of Lord Ullin’s Daughter.  Yet I thought that the staining of the heather by the blood was the evil chiefly dreaded, and that, when the boatman said,

  “I’ll row you o’er the ferry. 
  It is not for your silver bright,
  But for your winsome lady,”

he was to receive the lady for his pay.  Similarly, I recently found that one of my own children was reading (and accepting) a verse of Tennyson’s In Memoriam as

  “Ring out the food of rich and poor,
     Ring in redness to all mankind,”

and finding no inward difficulty.

The only safeguard against this sort of misconceiving is to insist on varied statement, and to bring the child’s conceptions, wherever it be possible, to some sort of practical test.

Let us next pass to the subject of Apperception.

XIV.  APPERCEPTION

‘Apperception’ is a word which cuts a great figure in the pedagogics of the present day.  Read, for example, this advertisement of a certain text-book, which I take from an educational journal:—­

     #WHAT IS APPERCEPTION?#

     For an explanation of Apperception see Blank’s PSYCHOLOGY,
     Vol. ——­ of the ——­ Education Series, just published.

     The difference between Perception and Apperception is
     explained for the teacher in the preface to Blank’s
     PSYCHOLOGY.

Many teachers are inquiring, “What is the meaning of Apperception in educational psychology?” Just the book for them is Blank’s PSYCHOLOGY in which the idea was first expounded.

The most important idea in educational psychology is Apperception.  The teacher may find this expounded in Blank’s PSYCHOLOGY.  The idea of Apperception is making a revolution in educational methods in Germany.  It is explained in Blank’s PSYCHOLOGY, Vol. ——­ of the ——­ Education Series, just published.

     Blank’s PSYCHOLOGY will be mailed prepaid to any address on
     receipt of $1.00.