One more example I will give to bring out another and important feature
in the mental process. Strolling before breakfast in early spring in my
friend's garden, there is borne to me on the morning air a whiff of
violet fragrance. Not only does this lead me to construct violets, but
it reminds me of a scene in my childhood with which the scent of these
flowers was closely associated. Not only is the object constructed, but
a scene with which their fragrant odour has been associated is
_reconstructed_ in memory. The violets are immediate constructs or
presentations of sense; the remembered scene is a _reconstruct_ or
representation in memory. So, too, when I heard a piercing howl in the
street, the dog I constructed was a vague presentation of sense; but the
street in which I instinctively placed him was a reconstruct or
representation in memory. The difference between a construct or
presentation of sense, and a reconstruct or representation in memory, is
that the former is directly suggested through the immediate action of
some quality or activity of the object, while the latter is indirectly
suggested through some intermediate agency.
Before proceeding further, let us review the conclusions we have thus
far reached. Through the action of certain surroundings on our sensitive
organization, we receive certain impressions, and among these
impressions and others revived in memory we recognize certain
similarities or differences in quality, in intensity, in order of
sequence, and in source of origin. The sensations which thus originate
are mental facts in no sense resembling their causes, but representing
them in mental symbolism. The consciousness of similarity or difference
is no part of the impression, but a further mental fact arising out of
the impression, and with it giving origin to sensation. It deals with
the relation of impressions among each other and to the recipient. It
involves recognition and discrimination. Its basis is laid in memory.
The sensations are instantly localized, referred to objects, and
projected outwards, mainly through the instrumentality of the muscular
sense. The mental symbolism is thus built into the objects around us,
and constructs are formed. But into the tissue of these constructs are
woven, not only the sensations immediately received, but much that is
only suggested through association as the outcome of past experience,
individual and ancestral. The constructs and their associated
reconstructs are thus endowed with qualities which have practical
reality, since they are not for me only, but for you and for mankind.
They are, therefore, in a sense independent of _me_, but nowise
independent of _man_.[FT]
Some of the constructs are endowed with activities, and some with
feelings akin to our own. Finally, in the field of vision which we
construct or reconstruct, the objects are seen to stand in relationship
to each other, and the scene as a whole is perceived to be part of an
orderly sequence of events.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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