The “Apperceptive Mass” Concept


   
     During the seventeenth century German philosopher George Herbart introduced a new concept which he called “the apperceptive
mass”. Herbart had been trying to explain how human beings get to be the way they are. And his many observations of people led him to
become quite dissatisfied with John Locke’s idea of the tableau rasa. Locke had believed that a blank slate (tableau rasa) represented a
good metaphor for man’s mind at the time of birth. Herbart disliked this metaphor for two primary reasons: (1) you can always erase a slate
whereas learning experiences quite frequently tend to remain indelibly and permanently imprinted in the mind; and (2) a slate is a rock, and
rocks are hard, rigid and unmaleable. In contrast, the mind of man is in most respects quite pliable. Within limits it can be shaped.
This led Herbart to suggest “a glob of clay” as representing a much more accurate metaphor for the way man’s mind exists at the time of his
birth. In essence, he suggested that man’s mind is like a shapeless “glob of clay” upon the initial entrance into the incarnate world.
     However, taking this one step further, Herbart began to realize that nothing is completely “shapeless”. Every so-called “shapeless”
form has a shape. For example, all clouds have shapes, even though it could accurately be argued that each cloud is actually quite
“shapeless”. Moreover, “shapeless” forms vary in their attractiveness--in what could be labeled their social stimulus value. One could take
a large number of clouds of similar size; and some of these might be seen as being so beautiful as to cause the conjuring up of romantic
images. Others might be seen as being quite ugly or unappealing.
     Suppose 15,000 twenty ounce globs of clay were laid out on a huge table somewhere. Let us suppose that 15,000 elementary school
art students were to be given an outing, and each of them had to select a twenty ounce glob of clay upon which to work. All of these globs
of clay are essentially shapeless, and all are of approximately twenty ounces in weight.
     The first thing one might observe is that some of these globs of clay are preferred over other globs of clay. Indeed, we might expect to
observe many of the more aggressive children fighting with one another as to who is going to get to work with the more attractive of the
twenty ounce, shapeless globs of clay.
     Not only do some of the shapeless globs appear superficially to be more or less attractive than its neighbors, but each shapeless glob
varies at least a little bit from each other glob in terms of malleability and pliability. Some of the globs of clay might be a slight bit harder in
texture than others, and thus may be a little bit more difficult to mold, and less pleasant to the touch. Others, in contrast, may appear to be a
modicum too soft. We can assume that the lion’s share of these 15,000 globs of clay can be successfully molded into something attractive
and worthwhile--given the attention of a reasonably dedicated artist-sculptor (parent). A small minority of the globs of clay may not be
quite so easy to shape; but all can be molded into something, given the right amount of patience, dedication, knowledge and artistic skill.
     Further, each glob of clay (analog of the human mind) can be construed as incorporating both a passive and an active component.
During a person’s formative years the passive component will always be far more influential than the active component. Hence, each
perception a person experiences through his/her five physical senses acts to shape and mold (ever so slightly) the glob of clay (mind).
The glob of clay (mind) is constantly being shaped and molded because a person can never stop perceiving and experiencing things until
the moment of physical death. Thus the molding (experiencing) is always going on. And it is always going on in a cumulative manner so
that each change builds upon all of those which had preceeded it. Clay can usually be reshaped after clear patterns (a mold) has been
established. But it is invariably far easier to set the clay into the right shape and pattern initially, than it is to destroy an old shape and then
try to mold a new one out of the same raw material.
     The impact of the artist’s shaping and molding tends to be far more influential during the early stages of the work (childhood) than
during the later stages. Hence, the parents establish the basic form (permitted by their clay’s characteristics) of their “sculpture” during the
formative years of the young child’s mind. Adolescent and adult experiences simply serve to sharpen and perfect the sculptured piece into
its final shape.
     Just as the glob of clay is constantly being shaped and molded and changed with each new experience (with some experiences
molding and changing it more deeply than others), the glob of clay is simultaneously functioning in an active way. Simply put, the
apperceptive mass (mind) “glob of clay” is ALSO the thing that is doing the perceiving and interpreting. People “see” and interpret things
with their MINDS, and not with their eyes. The eyes are merely receptors. Similarly, the ears, smell, taste and touch senses are nothing more than
receptors. The sense organs do no interpreting or perceiving on their own. Perceiving and interpreting (which is an integral part of
perceiving) can only be accomplished by the mind (apperceptive mass).
     This shaping of the glob of clay (apperceptive mass) by life experience illustrates the fact that as people we are constantly changing.
We do not interpret things the same way today as we interpreted them yesterday. During early childhood, changes in the structure and
content of the apperceptive mass (perceiving and interpreting mind) are often quite dramatic. In a very real sense the three-year old child is
in a whole host of ways a different person than he/she had been at the age of two. Extreme trauma, such as that which might accrue from
forcing an inhibited person into wartime combat, might well be expected to drastically alter the apperceptive mass of an adult male and
render his interpretive/experiential apparatus enormously altered. But in general, drastic changes over short periods of time are normally
limited to the early childhood years. Such drastic changes can occur in perfectly healthy family environments. No trauma need be involved
in rendering the five year old a quite different person from whom he had been at age four.
The gist of this discussion is that people interpret their world with and through an apperceptive mass (mind) whose content is constantly
changing. Changes become fewer and slower as the organism grows older and matures. But people are nonetheless constantly changing in
their perceptions/interpretations of social stimuli. They are constantly in the process of change from the moment of birth until the moment
of death.
     In sum, there is both an active and a passive component to the apperceptive mass. The apperceptive mass is constantly being shaped
and molded, just like a glob of clay. But at the same time just as the apperceptive mass is being fed more and more new content with each
new experience, it is also functioning in a very active way as a perceiving and interpreting mechanism. Thus it will see and react to things
at least slightly differently today from the way in which it reacted to and perceived them yesterday. This is because its content is
constantly in the process of dynamic change. Each new experience (perception) becomes dynamically amalgamated and integrated into the
whole of the subconscious mind (computer tape memory/feeling bank).
     “Easy children” are perceived by their parents as having attractive (easily malleable) minds (“globs of clay”). They are labeled by
their significant adults as being “easy”, and they gradually internalize all of the positive intimations that are inherent in this label. The
quite total biological and psychoemotional dependency which a very young child feels for its parents virtually assures full, unquestioned,
uncritical internalization into the subconscious (robot computer) mind of the mother’s labels, regardless of whether these labels might be
false or accurate. And in a very important respect these labels serve to enhance the initial characteristics of the seemingly shapeless “glob
of clay” (mind), irrespective of whether these inborn characteristics are socially defined as desirable or undesirable.
     The same process applies with regard to so-called “difficult children”. . Parents perceive certain aspects of their shapeless “glob of
clay” as being socially undesirable. They react to and label these “undesirable” features. And in so doing they cause these attributes to
become accentuated. Thus, the initial inborn traits (regardless of whether they are viewed by the parents as socially favorable or as
socially unfavorable) tend to become accentuated and reinforced as a direct consequence of parental labeling. The negative label becomes
deeply internalized into the robot computer of the subconscious mind. And initially shy and reserved children thus tend to become more
and more shy as time goes by.
     In essence, the apperceptive mass/”glob of clay” concept of George Herbart provides a useful explanatory “bridge” between the
innate, inborn, genetic/biological factors on the one hand, and the learning/experiential factors on the other hand. The apperceptive mass
concept illustrates in a concrete way that there is nothing contradictory or mutually exclusive between “nature” and “nurture”. They
both work together in a synergistic manner to produce the human being.