, partly preservative. To recall an object to the mind is
to reconstruct the percept in the absence of a sense-impression.[112]

An act of memory is obviously distinguished from one of simple
imagination by the presence of a conscious reference to the past. Every
recollection is an immediate reapprehension of some past object or
event. However vague this reference may be, it must be there to
constitute the process one of recollection.

The every-day usages of language do not at first sight seem to
consistently observe this distinction. When a boy says, "I remember my
lesson," he appears to be thinking of the present only, and not
referring to the past. In truth, however, there is a vague reference to
the fact of retaining a piece of knowledge through a given interval of
time.

Again, when a man says, "I recollect your face," this means, "Your face
seems familiar to me." Here again, though there is no definite reference
to the past, there is a vague and indefinite one.

It is plain from this definition that recollection is involved in all
recognition or identification. Merely to be aware that I have seen a
person before implies a minimum exercise of memory. Yet we may roughly
distinguish the two actions of perception and recollection in the
process of recognition. The mere recognition of an object does not
imply the presence of a distinct representative or mnemonic image. In
point of fact, in so far as recognition is assimilation, it cannot be
said to imply a _distinct_ act of memory at all. It is only when
similarity is perceived amid difference, only when the accompaniments or
surroundings of the object as previously seen, differencing it from the
object as now seen, are brought up to the mind that we may be said
distinctly to recall the past. And our state of mind in recognizing an
object or person is commonly an alternation between these two acts of
separating the mnemonic image from the percept and so recalling or
recollecting the past, and fusing the image and the percept in what is
specifically marked off as recognition.[113]

Although I have spoken of memory as a reinstatement in representative
form of external experience, the term must be understood to include
every revival of a past experience, whether external or internal, which
is recognized as a revival. In a general way, the recallings of our
internal feelings take place in close connection with the recollection
of external circumstances or events, and