With an abstract idea of an object in mind we very deftly, through the
use of memory and constructive imagination, deduce the whole from the
part recognized as familiar.
Example: In walking through the field, along the bank of the brook, I
glimpse under the low-hanging branches of the weeping willow a
restlessly moving hoof. I see a certain kind of hoof and only that. Or I
hear a lowing sound. And I say "cow." I have not seen a cow, but only a
part which tells me a cow is there; for all the cows I ever saw had
hoofs of that general description, and so it fits into my concept _cow_,
and into no others. Or I have heard cows, only, give that lowing sound
before. From my perception, then, of hoof or sound I apperceive _cow_.
Memory relates that hoof or that lowing sound to a certain kind of
animal known in the past; and constructive imagination draws in all the
rest of the picture that belongs with it.
Again, we may apperceive an object or quality from our recognition of
something which in our experience has been associated, under those
particular circumstances, with only that object or quality.
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