General Theory of Knowledge

To the human mind, as it slowly awakens in every child, the world at first seems a chaos consisting of mere individual experiences. The only connection between them is that they follow each other consecutively. Of these experiences, all of which at first are different from one another, certain parts come to be distinguished by the fact that they are repeated more frequently, and therefore receive a special character, that of being familiar. The familiarity is due to our recalling a former similar experience; in other words, to our feeling that there is a relation between the present experience and certain former experiences. The cause of this phenomenon, which is at the basis of all mental life, is a quality common to all living things, and manifesting itself in all their functions, while appearing but rarely or accidentally in inorganic nature. It is the quality by virtue of which the oftener any process has taken place in a living organism the more easily it is repeated...