Representation is the next form above sense-perception.
The lowest phase of representation is recollection, which
simply repeats for itself a former sense-perception or
series of sense-perceptions; in representation the mind is
free as regards external impressions; it does not require
the presence of the object, but recalls it without its own
time and place; fancy and imagination are next higher than
recollection, because the mind not only recalls images,
but makes new combinations of them, or creates them
altogether; attention is the appearance of the will in the
intellect; with attention begins the separation of the
transient from the variable in perception; memory is the
highest form of representation; memory deals with general
forms--not mere images of experience, but general types of
objects of perception; memory, in this sense, is
productive as well as reproductive; with memory arises
language.
Here we pass over to the consideration of higher forms of intellect and
will.
While mere sensation, as such, acts only in the presence of the
object--reproducing (ideally), it is true, the external object, the
faculty of representation is a higher form of self-activity (or of
reaction against surrounding conditions), because it can recall, at its
own pleasure, the ideal object. Here is the beginning of emancipation
from the limitations of time.
The self-activity of representation can summon before it the object that
is no longer present to it. Hence its activity is now a double one, for
it can seize not only what is now and here immediately before it, but it
can compare this present object with the past, and identify or
distinguish between the two. Thus recollection or representation may
become _memory_.
As memory, the mind achieves a form of activity far above that of
sense-perception or mere recollection. It must be noted carefully that
mere recollection or representation, although it holds fast the
perception in time (making it permanent), does not necessarily
constitute an activity completely emancipated from time, nor indeed very
far advanced towards it. It is only the beginning of such emancipation.
For mere recollection stands in the presence of the special object of
sense-perception; although the object is no longer present to the senses
(or to mere feeling), yet the image is present to the representative
perception, and is just as much a particular here and now as the object
of sense-perception. There intervenes a new activity on the part of the
soul before it arrives at memory. Recollection is not memory, but it is
the activity which grows into it by the aid of the activity of
attention.
The special characteristics of objects of the senses are allowed to drop
away, in so far as they are unessential and merely circumstantial, and
gradually there arises in the mind the type--the _general form_--of the
object perceived. This general form is the object of memory. Memory
deals therefore with what is general, and a type, rather than with what
is directly recollected or perceived.
The activity by which the mind ascends from sense-perception to memory
is the activity of attention. Here we have the appearance of the will in
intellectual activity. Attention is the control of perception by means
of the will. The senses shall no longer passively receive and report
what is before them, but they shall choose some definite point of
observation, and neglect all the rest.
Here, in the act of attention we find _abstraction_, and the greater
attainment of freedom by the mind. The mind abstracts its view from the
many things before it, and concentrates on one point.
Educators have for many ages noted that the habit of attention is the
first step in intellectual education. With it we have found the point of
separation between the animal intellect and the human. Not attention
simply--like that with which the cat watches by the hole of a mouse--but
attention which arrives at results of abstraction, is the distinguishing
characteristic of educative beings.
Attention abstracts from some things before it and concentrates on
others. Through attention grows the capacity to discriminate between
the special, particular object and its general type. Generalization
arises, but not what is usually called generalization--only a
more elementary form of it. Memory, as the highest form of
representation--distinguishing it from mere recollection, which
reproduces only what has been perceived--such memory deals with the
general forms of objects, their continuity in time. Such activity of
memory, therefore, does not reproduce mere images, but only the
concepts or general ideas of things, and therefore it belongs to the
stage of mind that uses language.