or to a few. In the bringing of the object under a certain class of
objects there is clearly room for greater variety of individual
perception. For example, the ability to recognize a man as a Frenchman
turns on a special kind of previous experience. And this transition from
the common or universal to the individual experience is seen yet more
plainly in the case of individual recognition. To identify an object,
say a particular person, commonly presupposes some previous experience
or knowledge of this object, and the existence in the past of some
special relation of the recognizer to the recognized, if only that of an
observer. In fact, it is evident that in this mode of recognition we
have the transition from common perception to individual
recollection.[8]

While we may thus distinguish different steps in the process of visual
recognition, we may make a further distinction, marking off a passive
and an active stage in the process. The one may be called the stage of
preperception, the other that of perception proper.[9] In the first the
mind holds itself in a passive attitude, except in so far as the
energies of external attention are involved. The impression here awakens
the mental images which answer to past experiences according to the
well-known laws of association. The interpretative image which is to
transform the impression into a percept is now being formed by a mere
process of suggestion.

When the image is thus formed, the mind may be said to enter upon a more
active stage, in which it now views the impression through the image, or
applies this as a kind of mould or framework to the impression. This
appears to involve an intensification of the mental image, transforming
it from a representative to a presentative mental state, making it
approximate somewhat to the full intensity of the sensation. In many of