Before closing our consideration of preparation as a stage of method, it will be well again to call attention to the fact that this is not one of the four recognized stages of the learning process, but rather a subsidiary feature of the second, or apperceptive stage. In other words, actual advance is made by the pupil toward the control of a new experience, not through a review of former experience, but by an active relating of elements selected from past experience to the interpretation of the new problem. CHAPTER XI LEARNING AS A RELATING ACTIVITY OR PROCESS OF SYNTHESIS =Learning a Unifying Process.=--It has been seen that the learner, in gaining control of new knowledge, must organize into the new experience elements selected from former experiences. For instance, when a person gains a knowledge of a new fruit (guava), he not only brings forward in consciousness from his former knowledge the ideas--rind, flesh, seed, etc.,--to interpret the strange object, but also associates these into a single experience, a new fruit. So long also as the person referred to in an earlier chapter retained in his consciousness as distinct factors three experiences--seeing a boy at the fence, seeing the vineyard, and finally, seeing the boy eating grapes--these would not, as three such distinct experiences, constitute a knowledge of grape-stealing. On the other hand, as soon as these are combined, or associated by a relating act of thought, the different factors are organized into a new idea symbolized by the expression, _grape-stealing_. =Examples From School-room Procedure.=--A similar relating process is involved when the learner faces a definite school problem. When, for instance, the pupil gains a knowledge of the sign /, he must not only bring forward in consciousness from his former knowledge distinct ideas of a line, of two dots, and of a certain mathematical process, but must also associate these into a new idea, division-sign. So also a person may know that air takes up more moisture as it becomes warmer, that the north-east trade-winds blow over the Sahara from land areas, and that the Sahara is situated just north of the equator. But the mind must unify these into a single experience in order to gain a knowledge of the condition of the rainfall in that quarter. NATURE OF SYNTHESIS