If recall is so important in thinking and acting, it is worth while to make a survey of the materials that recall {367} furnishes. In general, using the term "recall" rather broadly, we say that any previously learned reaction may be recalled. Writing movements may be said to be recalled when we write, and speech movements when we speak. "Higher units", like the word habits and phrase habits of the telegrapher and typist, are in a broad sense recalled whenever they are used. The typist does not by any means recall the experience of learning a higher unit, but he calls into action again the response that he has learned to make. In the same way, the word habits and phrase habits of vocal speech are called into action, i.e., recalled, whenever we speak.

Besides these motor reactions, tendencies to reaction can be recalled. The attitude of hostility that may have become habitual in us towards a certain person, or towards a certain task, is called into activity at the mention of that person or task. The acquired interest in architecture that we may have formed by reading or travel is revived by the sight of an ambitious group of buildings. A slumbering purpose may be recalled into activity by some relevant stimulus.

Observed facts can be recalled, and this is the typically human form of recall. In animals, we see the recall of tendencies and of learned movements, but no clear evidence of the recall of observed facts. To be recalled with certainty, a fact must have been definitely noted when it was before us. If we have definitely noted the color of a person's eyes, we are in a position to testify that his eyes are brown, for example; otherwise, we may say that we think probably his eyes are brown; because we have certainly noticed that he is dark, and the dark eyes fit best into this total impression.

We say that a fact is recalled when we think of it without its being present to the senses. While the original {368} observation of the fact was a response to a sensory stimulus, the recall of it is a response to some other stimulus, some "substitute stimulus". When John is before me, I observe that his eyes are brown in response to a visual stimulus; but I later recall this fact in response simply to the name "John", or in response to the question as to what is the color of John's eyes. I see what a square is by seeing squares and handling them, and later I get this idea simply in response to the word "square" in conversation or reading.