=Problem as Object of Analysis.=--Although the second step of the learning process has been described as a selecting of elements from past experience, it might be supposed that the various elements which the mind has been said to select from its former experiences to interpret the new problem, come in a sense from the presentation itself. Thus it is often said, in describing the present step in the learning process, that the presentation embodies a certain aggregate of experience, which the learner can master by analysing it into its component parts and recombining the analysed parts into a better known whole. =Analysis Depends upon Selection.=--It is not in the above sense, however, that the term analysis is to be applied in the learning process. It is not true, for instance, when a person is presented with a strange object, say an _ornithorhynchus_, and realizes it in only a vague way, that any mere analysis of the object will discover for him the various characteristics which are to synthesize into a knowledge of the animal. This would imply that in analysis the mind merely breaks up a vaguely known whole in order to make of it a definitely known whole. But the learner could not discover the characteristics of such an object unless the mind attended to it with certain elements of its former experiences. Unless, for instance, the person already knew certain characteristics of both birds and animals, he could not interpret the ornithorhynchus as a bird-beaked animal. In the case of the child and the mud-turtle, also, there could have been no analysis of the problem in the way referred to, had the child not had the ideas, bug and basket, as elements of former experience. These characteristics, therefore, which enter into a definite knowledge of the object, do not come out of the object by a mere mechanical process of analysis, but are rather read into the object by the apperceptive process. That is, the learner does not get his new experience directly out of the presented materials, but builds up his new experience out of elements of his former knowledge. In other words, the learner sees in the new object, or problem, only such characteristics as his former knowledge and interest enable him to see. Thus while the learner may be said from one standpoint to analyse the new problem, this is possible only because he is able to break up, or analyse, his former experience and read certain of its elements into the new presentation. To say that the mind analyses the unknown object, or topic, in any other sense, would be to confound mental interpretation with physical analysis.