The fourth question propounded at the beginning of the chapter, as to how we can know that the fact now recalled is what we formerly committed to memory and now wish to recall, is part of the larger question of how we recognize. What we recognize includes not only facts recalled, but also facts not recalled but presented a second time to the senses. Recognition of objects seen, heard, touched, etc., is the most rudimentary form of memory. The baby shows signs of recognizing persons and things before he shows signs of recall. A little later, he recognizes and understands words before he begins to speak (recall) them; and everybody's vocabulary of recognized words remains much greater than his speaking vocabulary. We recognize faces that we could not recall, and names that we could not recall. In short, recognition is easier than recall.

Consequently any theory of recognition that makes it depend on recall can scarcely be correct. One such theory held that an object is recognized by recalling its original setting in past experience; an odor would be recognized by virtue of recalling the circumstances under which it was formerly experienced. Now sometimes it does happen that an odor which seems familiar, but cannot be identified, calls up a past experience and thus is fully recognized; but such "indirect recognition" is not the usual thing, for direct recognition commonly takes place before recall of the past experience has time to occur. You see a person, and know him at once, though it may require some moments before you can recall where and when you have seen him before.

Recognition may be more or less complete. At its minimum, it is simply a "feeling of familiarity" with the object; at its maximum it is locating the object precisely in your autobiography. You see a man, and say, "He looks {358} familiar, I must have seen him somewhere", and then it dawns on you, "Oh! yes, now I know exactly who he is; he is the man who . . ." Between these extremes lie various degrees of recognition. This man seems to be some one seen recently, or a long, long time ago, or at the seashore, or as a salesman in a store; or as some one you looked up to, or felt hostility towards, or were amused at; and often these impressions turn out to be correct, when you succeed in fully recognizing the person. These impressions resemble the first signs of recognition in the baby's behavior; you say that the baby remembers people because he smiles at one who has pleased him before, and shrinks from one who has displeased him.

Recognition described in terms of stimulus and response.

Recognition is a form of learned response, depending on previous reaction to the object recognized. To recognize an object is to respond to it as we responded before--except for the feeling of familiarity, which could not occur the first time we saw the object. But notice this: though the object is the same identical object it was before, it may have changed somewhat. At least, its setting is different; this is a different time and perhaps a different place, and the circumstances are bound to be more or less different. In spite of this difference in the situation, we make the same response as before.

Now, the response we made to the object in its original setting was a response to the whole situation, object plus setting; our response to the object was colored by its setting. When we now recognize the object, we make the same response to the object in a different setting; the response originally called out by the object plus its setting is now aroused by the object alone. Consequently we have an uneasy feeling of responding to a situation that is not present. {359} This uneasy feeling is the feeling of familiarity in its more haunting and "intriguing" form.

We see some one who seems familiar and who arouses a hostile attitude in us that is not accounted for in the least by his present actions. We have this uneasy feeling of responding to a situation that is not present, and cannot rest till we have identified the person and justified our hostile attitude.

Or, we see some one who makes us feel as if we had had dealings with him before in a store or postoffice where he must have served us; we find ourselves taking the attitude towards him that is appropriate towards such a functionary, though there is nothing in his present setting to arouse such an attitude. Or, we see some one in the city streets who seems to put us back into the atmosphere of a vacation at the seashore, and by searching our memory we finally locate him as an individual we saw at such and such a resort. At other times, the feeling of familiarity is rather colorless, because the original situation in which the person was encountered was colorless; but we still have the feeling of responding to something that is not present. We make, or start to make, the same response to the person that we originally made to him plus his setting, and this response to something that is not there gives the feeling of familiarity.

When we see the same person time after time in the same setting, as when we go into the same store every morning and buy a paper from the same man, we cease to have any strong feeling of familiarity at sight of him, the reason being that we are always responding to him in the same setting, and consequently have no feeling of responding to something that is not there. But if we see this same individual in a totally different place, he may give us a queer feeling of familiarity. When we see the same person time after time {360} in various settings, we end by separating him from his surroundings and responding to him alone, and therefore the familiarity feeling disappears.

Complete recognition, or "placing" the object, involves something more than these feelings and rudimentary reactions. It involves the recall of a context or scheme of events, and a fitting of the object into the scheme.