264 DIVERSIONS OF A NATURALIST 



the reason why one has this doubt is that we all recognize 

 that consciousness without memory is really a contradic- 

 tion in terms. Memory — the inscription or record in 

 our brains of past experiences — exists without conscious- 

 ness, as we all know, by observation of ourselves and our 

 fellows. But the very essence of consciousness is memory. 

 We cannot even be " conscious " of the experience of a 

 single moment without being also conscious of the 

 memory of some previous condition — however small, 

 temporary, and incomplete the memory may be. To be 

 conscious we must compare the impressions reaching the 

 brain at this moment with the memory of those of a past 

 moment. And in lower animals and infants beginning 

 to be conscious, the " recollections " available or accessible 

 to consciousness may not extend farther back than a 

 few seconds ! If the memory of past experiences of 

 which we are aware, that is to say, which are accessible 

 to consciousness, is large and extends over the impressions 

 of days, weeks, and years, then the conscious man or 

 animal is in a totally different position from that of the 

 man or animal who has only a very short and vague 

 memory of which he or it is conscious. Thus it may be 

 true that an animal or an infant is " conscious " and is 

 comparing the present with the recollection of the past, 

 and yet that the basis of comparison — the reach of 

 memory accessible to consciousness — is so small as to be 

 of little or no significance. Yet it is the beginning of a 

 process which, gradually enlarging the access of conscious- 

 ness to " memory," passes through a thousand degrees of 

 increasing grasp and complexity (due to increased com- 

 plexity in the microscopic connexions of the structural 

 units, the branching nerve-corpuscles, which build up the 

 brain) until it gives us the "consciousness" of a Shake- 

 speare, a Newton, or a Darwin. The important fact in 

 this consideration of what we mean by " conscious " and 



