nal 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originally made to him _plus_ his setting, and this response to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