IX. Make a study in this connection of the responsibility of teachers in the matter of training children and establishing in them lofty and effective ideals.

LESSON III

RECOGNITION

PREPARATION STEP.-I. Recall some recent time when you walked in the street; rode on a car, a train; glanced in a shop-window; asked a question; shook hands with some one; talked of the weather; dined out. Recall the best time you have had recently.

Image vividly the above experiences and analyze quickly the processes of association, retention, and reproduction by which it is possible for you to think each one.

They are each and all groups of secondary sensations in time and space relations, the results in mind of the restimulus of brain-cells according to according to tendencies formerly

established.

II. With us all a great part of our daily experiences is never recalled. We remember what we need and the rest, though permanent in its influence, is lost in time to conscious recall.

PRESENTATION STEP.-Suppose for a minute that your thoughts came back in wrong time and space relations: that your recent "best time" was placed, say, in a dentist's chair instead of in a pew; that the last dinner out seemed to have been on Christmas Day instead of on New Year's Day; that it was thought of as at a hotel instead of at a friend's home; that a song sung to you was recalled as addressed to some one else.

With relationships changed in this way, should you recog nize your "best time" or your last dinner out? Of course

you could not. Each group must be reinstated in its former relations to seem familiar. The last dinner out, say, must be thought of as on New Year's Day at Dr. B's with Miss B., her father, mother, and Mlle I. only present. It was in the evening in a certain room and was followed by some music.

And not only must the groups "dove-tail" with other groups but the sensations of each group must be reinstated in the same relations as before that we may know it again as a former experience. Professor James somewhere says that something seems to click" when we recognize a thought.

66

The color and other sensations that make the people, the lighted table, the flowers, the dishes, and the food must all be grouped in the same time and space relations (and logical relations, or correlations, also) as formerly. The effect of all this reinstating of the elements of secondary experience is that you recognize these ideas as the reproduction of your experience the last time you dined out.

The feeling of familiarity in the process of reinstating sensations in their former relations is Recognition.

APPLICATION STEP.-I. One caution should be observed in your practice in analyzing memories, namely, do not confuse the steps: Retention is not reproduction, nor is it recognition. Reproduction is not recognition. Each step is logically distinct.

II. Analyze your memories of many secondary thoughts daily somewhat in this way: I recall band music that I heard last summer. In order that I might hear it then, vibrations from the instruments set the air in motion, this motion reached my ears, and excited my auditory nerve and successive brain-cells, with the result in mind of a melody played by a band. In order that I may think the same mel

ody now, the same brain-cells must be excited again. They are now excited in accordance with the law of habit, and the following mental states result in my stream of thought: (a) I saw my paper, (b) I thought I must write one complete analysis of memories, (c) I'll use the "band music," (d) secondary sounds of band music, (e) secondary visual image of a park and people. The elements of the secondary sounds are reinstated in their former relations, these groups fit in with those of the scenes and people, and I recognize the tune as that played by the Highland Band in West Princes Street Gardens last summer.

Retention was in the tendency of my brain-cells to be active as they were last summer even though I am no longer in Edinboro.

The process of restimulating those brain-cells because others now active were active with them then, with the result in mind of exactly similar sound sensations is Reproduction.

The feeling accompanying the process of reinstating the sensations in their former relations is Recognition.

There are all detheir former rela

(I must ask you to pardon so much repetition-but my excuse for it is that it is only in the constant analysis of different mental experiences that one can become familiar with the facts of psychology. I can promise you that the longer you work at it the more fascinating it becomes.) III. Recognition is a relative matter. grees of reinstatement of sensations in tions, hence all degrees of recognition. I hummed to myself, for example, the other day vaguely part of an air. It came to my mind several times afterward, when more and more sensations were reinstated and I decided that it was Gluck's aria, Euridice.. I kept at work recalling more and more about it and reinstating all the material in its former relations, till I had the relatively complete recognition of

the aria as sung by Miss W. at the D. Club at Miss M's house three years ago.

Thus all thought is characterized by different degrees of recognition from the vaguest, most fleeting recognition that the object before one is a child, not a chair-to the complete consciousness of all that is known of the given image.

IV. Though the recognition of secondary experience only has been spoken of, the recognition of primary groups of sensations is a process the same in kind.

An

V. The parts of all thought as it flows along are associated with other parts, consequently recognized. isolated thought is unthinkable.

The fact that our mental life is coherent is perhaps the basis of our feeling of selfhood.

It is by recognition through association that objects and experiences have meaning for us. "When a complex process holds together it has meaning."

VI. Reproduction and Recognition in memory are just the process of Perception looked at from the aspect of the inner order.

VII. The evolution of the process of recognition is interesting:

* *

"The mood of at-homeness or confidence is a weakened form of the emotion of relief. Fear of strange things and strange people is instinctive with man; and it is a survival of fear unfulfilled, of relief, that we experience when we recognize *. It follows that every recognition is inherently pleasant. Oftentimes, it is true, the pleasantness of the at-home mood is outweighed by the unpleasantness of the associated ideas: we may recognize a person whom we particularly want to avoid." ("A Primer of Psychology," E. B. Titchener.)

LESSON IV

MEMORY TRAINING

PREPARATION STEP.-I. It is the commonly accepted opinion that there is no such thing as formal memory training. To apply the generalizations of these lessons, however, to many particular cases, to look at mental life from many standpoints is desirable. And there are still several considerations of interest in connection with memories, which, with no implications as to formal training, can well be grouped under the above general head.

II Why should one have a good memory?

To have forgotten, say, the experiences of all the forenoons of one's life would be manifestly inconvenient. Think how much this loss would have troubled you to-day about the house, in the street, in all your relationships. But it would be more than inconvenient.

Forgetfulness is fatal, in proportion as one suffers from it, to the attainment of his ideals, to his power of accomplishment. It is not what one has in his note-books, or what he knows where to find in books of reference or from people, but what is available at the moment from his own potential mental store, what he can remember in the terms of thought and muscles that gives him ability, power to do. In fact, one measure of a person's ability at any moment is the readiness with which he has the use of his past experience. In a sense we are limited in what we would do to what our memories of the past enable us to do.

It is quite important, then, that one have potentially available all the wealth of knowledge in right relations and of muscular co-ordinations of his past that will make him a wise and capable man, or, in other words, that he have "a good memory."