A first book in psychology / by Mary Whiton Calkins.

  • Mary Whiton Calkins
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A first book in psychology / by Mary Whiton Calkins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    CHAPTER VIII RECOGNITION I. Recognition as Personal Attitude The word ‘ memory ’ is commonly used with two distinct meanings. “I remember” Goethe’s “Erlkonig” when I can correctly repeat it; but “I remember” the teacher who set me to learning the poem when I recognize her, twenty years later, an unexpected figure in the Potsdamer Bahnhof. These two experiences, though very often combined, are utterly different and are therefore wisely distinguished by different names. In this book, accordingly, the word ‘ rec¬ ognition ’ is used to indicate the consciousness of an object as identical with an object of my earlier experience, whereas ‘memory’ is used of accurate reproductive imagination, the repetition of former consciousness. Memory, in this sense, is very often supplemented by recognition, yet is possible with¬ out it. For example, I am remembering if I “see with my mind’s eye” a vision of the Dent du Midi, even though I do not at the moment realize that this imagined mountain is called “Dent du Midi,” or that I have ever before seen it. But I am recognizing when I say to myself, “I saw this moun- tain on a July day from the Montreux terrace,” or even if I reflect, “I have seen this mountain before, though I don’t know where or when.” Recognition may accompany per¬ ception, and indeed every sort of experience as well as memory. The example just given is of recognition with memory; but
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