220 EXPERIENCE AND IDEALISM 



normative value, in relation to experience ; the an 

 tithesis of experience as a tentative, fragmentary, 

 and ineffectual embodiment of meaning over 

 against the perfect, eternal system of meanings 

 which experience suggests even in nullifying and 

 mutilating. 



That from the memory standpoint experience 

 presents itself as a multiplicity of episodic events 

 with just enough continuity among them to sug 

 gest principles true &quot; on the whole &quot; or usually, 

 but without furnishing instruction as to their ex 

 act range and bearing, seems obvious enough. 

 Why should it not? The motive which leads to 

 reflection on past experience could be satisfied in 

 no other way. Continuities, connecting links, dy 

 namic transitions drop out because, for the pur 

 pose of the recollection, they would be hindrances 

 if now repeated ; or because they are now available 

 only when themselves objectified in definite terms 

 and thus given a quasi independent, a quasi atom 

 istic standing of their own. This is the only alter 

 native to what the psychologists term &quot; total rem 

 iniscence,&quot; which, so far as total, leave us with 

 an elephant on our hands. Unless we are going 

 to have a wholesale revivification of the past, giv 

 ing us just another embarrassing present experi 

 ence, illusory because irrelevant, memory must 

 work by retail by summoning distinct cases, 

 events, sequences, precedents. Dis-membering is 



