18. Essentially different is the direction along which the simple process of recognition develops, when the hindrances to immediate assimilation which give rise to the transition from simultaneous to successive association are great enough, so that the ideational elements which do not agree with the new perception unite -- either after the recognition has taken place or even when there is no such recognition whatever -- to form a special idea referred directly to an earlier impression. The process that arises under such circumstances is a memory-process and the idea that is perceived is a memory-idea, or memory-image.
18a. Memory-processes were the ones to which association-psychology generally limited the application of the concept association. But, as has been shown, these are associations that take place under especially complicated conditions. An understanding of the genesis of association was thus rendered impossible from [p. 242] the first, and it is easy to see that the doctrine accepted by the associationists is limited essentially to a logical rather than a psychological classification of the different kinds of association that are to be observed in memory-processes.
A knowledge of these more complex processes is possible, however, only through a study starting with the simpler associative processes, for the ordinary simultaneous assimilations and simultaneous and successive recognitions present themselves very naturally as the antecedents of memory-associations.
But even simultaneous recognition itself is nothing but an assimilation accompanied by a feeling which comes from the unassimilated ideational elements obscurely present in consciousness. In the second process these unassimilated elements serve to retard the process, so that the recognition develops into the primitive form of successive association. The impression is at first assimilated in the ordinary way, and then again in a second act with an accompanying feeling of recognition which serves to indicate the greater influence of certain reproduced elements. In this simple form of successive association the two successive ideas are referred to one and the same object, the only difference being that each time some different ideational and affective elements are apperceived. With memory-associations the case is essentially different. Here the heterogeneous elements of the earlier impressions predominate, and the first assimilation of the impression is followed by the formation of an idea made up of elements of the impression and also of those belonging, to earlier impressions, that are suitable for the assimilation because of certain of their components.
The more the heterogeneous elements predominate, the more is the second idea different from the first, or, on the other hand, the more the like elements predominate, the more the two ideas will be alike . In any case the second idea is always a reproduced idea and distinct from the new impression as an independent compound.
19. The general conditions for the rise of memory-images may exhibit shades and differences which run parallel to the forms of recognition and cognition discussed above. Various modifications of the memory-processes may. arise from the different kinds of ordinary assimilation that we become [p. 243] acquainted with above (15, 1 7), as the recognition of an object perceived once and that of an object familiar through frequent perceptions, and also from the cognition of a subject that is familiar in its general class-characteristics.
Simple recognition becomes a memory-process when the immediate assimilation of the impression is hindered by elements that belong not to the object itself, but to circumstances that attended its earlier perception. Just because the former perception occurred only once, or at least only once so far as the reproduction is concerned, these accompanying elements may be relatively clear and distinct and sharply distinguished from the surroundings of the new impression. In this way we have first of all transitional forms between recognition and remembering: the object is recognized, and at the same time referred to a particular earlier sense perception whose accompanying circumstances add a definite spacial and temporal relation to the memory-image. The memory-process is especially predominant in those cases where the element of the new impression that gave rise to the assimilation is entirely suppressed by the other components of the image, so that the associative relation between the memory-idea and the impression may remain completely unnoticed 19a. Such cases have been spoken of as "mediate memories", or "mediate associations". Still, just as with "mediate recognitions" we are, here too, dealing with processes that are fundamentally the same as ordinary associations. Take, for example, the case of a person who, sitting in his room at evening, suddenly remembers without any apparent reason a landscape that he passed through many years before; examination shows that there happened to be in the room a fragrant flower which he saw for the first time in that landscape. The difference between this and an ordinary memory-process in which the connection of the new impression with an earlier experience is clearly recognized, obviously consists in the fact that here the elements which recall the idea [p. 244] are pushed into the obscure background of consciousness other ideational elements.
The not infrequent experience, commonly known as the "spontaneous rise" of ideas, in memory-image suddenly appears in our mind without any cause, is in all probability reducible in every case to such latent associations.