Boris Sidis

“ The representative elements entering into the idea or image of an object change from reproduction to reproduction but they always mirror, refer to the same sensory elements and compounds; they recognize their object.
The recognition of an object or an event, however vague, means some experience that has been lived through before. In other words, the representation, although experienced, as a present psychic element, must have a glow of pastness about it. Representation is a present experience referring to a past life, to an event that is passing or that has passed away. ”

“ The recognitive moment carries its external world in itself, in its representation, and by affecting changes there, may bring about changes in the environment, thus controlling external conditions, instead of being controlled by them. Instead of being driven by external forces into blind obedience, into unintelligent adaptations, the moment is on the point, even in its lowest forms, to acquire some intelligent character in seeing ahead, by living over its former experiences in the states of representation, the sensori-motor reactions being accordingly modified. ”

“ The faintest and most obscure representation requires the presence of recognition in the background. We may say that without recognition representation becomes an impossibility. Recognition is the function of representative elements. Just as cognition is the function of sensory, presentative elements so recognition, or secondary cognition is the function of representative elements. Now that moment consciousness which has representative elements among the constituents of its content may be termed recognitive moment-consciousness. ”

“ The reference to the past becomes more and more definitely localized in time, the higher the recognitive moment rises in the scale of evolution. This process of localization of the recognized event in the past depends entirely on the time-sense becoming fully definite with the more or less greater perfection of the conceptual time scheme. ”

“ The reproduction of the recognitive moment is not induced by external stimuli only, but mainly by the course of other representations. Without actually being confronted with the object the representation of it may any time arise in the mind and call forth new adaptations to the external environment. ”

“ Thus savages and the ignorant classes of even civilized societies have an imperfect form of time localization. The definiteness of localization, however, is not of material consequence as far as our point of view is concerned. For all we know Ulysses' dog, the ape and the infant have no time-localization at all, what is enough to state from our psychological standpoint is the fact that recognition involves some form of pastness belonging to the implicated representative element, a pastness which in a higher stage becomes time-localization. ”

“ The day before, a week ago, a month ago, years past are equally projected into the vague past. The same holds true of the child-sense of the future. "When is to-morrow?" is a question I have been often asked by intelligent children of three, four and even five years old. ”

“ We have already shown that the characteristic trait of representative elements is their freedom from the bondage in accumulations or compounds in which sensory elements are kept; representative elements can be easily transposed, they can enter into new free associations without requiring special external stimuli to break the stable compound. ”

“ In the child we find that the time localization is quite indefinite. In very young children the future and the past such as yesterday and to-morrow have no definite meaning. Thus in children of three years that have come under my observation the apprehension of the past and future, such as yesterday and to-morrow is still wanting. ”