Herbart found his basis for the four steps of method, viz. _clearness_, _association_, _system_, _method_, in the ideas of absorption and reflection, the alternate pulsation of consciousness in absorbing and assimilating knowledge. Others, adopting this classification as essentially correct, have related these steps to customary psychological analysis. Thus Dörpfeld and Wiget point out that the mind goes through three well-marked processes when it performs the complete act of learning, namely, _perception_ of new facts; _thought_, or the bringing of ideas into logical relations; and _application_, or the exercise of the motor activities of the mind in putting knowledge into use. Perception gives the _percept_, thought gives the _conception_ (or rule, principle, generalization), and application gives _power_. In other words, the receptive and reflective capacities of the mind come to their full fruition when they result in adequate motor activities. With respect to perception a good method will first _prepare_ the mind for facts and will then _present_ them so that they may be apperceived. The first two steps are therefore _preparation_ and _presentation_. The first step, as Ziller pointed out, is essentially _analytic_ in character, since it analyzes the present store of consciousness in order to bring facts to the front that are closely related to those of the present lesson; the second step, _i.e._, presentation, is essentially _synthetic_, since its function is to add the matter of the new lesson to related knowledge already in possession. Both together constitute the initial stages of apperception. _Thought_ consists of two processes that may also be termed steps, and that are more or less observable in all good teaching; they are (1) the _association_ of newly apperceived facts with one another and with older and more firmly established ideas in order that rational connection may be established in what one knows, and especially in order that what is general and essential in given facts may be grasped by the mind; and (2) the condensation of knowledge into a _system_, such for instance as we see in the classifications of botany and zoölogy, or in the interdependence of principles as in arithmetic. Thought, in brief, involves the association of ideas and the derivation of generalizations such as are appropriate to the matter in hand and to the thought power of the pupils. The third stage, that of _application_, is not subdivided. Most other followers of Herbart, both German and American, though varying in methods of approach, conform essentially to the results of this analysis, distinguishing _five_ steps, as follows:--