70 GENERAL VIEW AND BASIS OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. 



6 until we either succeed,' ' or give up the pursuit as 

 hopeless.' l ' The reproducing power of the memory alto- 

 gether depends upon the nature of the associations by 

 which the new idea is linked on to other ideas which 

 have been previously recorded, and which enter into our 

 habitual current of thought.' 2 We usually also recall 

 most easily what we best understand. The automatic 

 action of the memory is also proved in a most striking 

 manner by the occasional, sudden, and unexpected recol- 

 lection of things which we have been trying in vain to 

 remember, and have therefore dismissed from conscious 

 mental action ; it is automatic and ' unconscious cerebra- 

 tion ' which reproduces them. We often detect ourselves 

 thinking, saying, or doing something unconsciously. 



In order to recall a forgotten idea, we voluntarily pass 

 in review a number of ideas which we know must be, or 

 are likely to be, related to it, in the hope that one or 

 other of these will suggest it through the bond of associa- 

 tion ; i.e. we search for it by the aid of ideas with which 

 we are familiar ; for instance, if it is the name of an acid, 

 we pass in review in succession all the names of that class 

 of bodies we can think of, and, to make the list as com- 

 plete as possible, we take the names in alphabetical order, 

 trying with each consonant its combination with each of 

 the vowels, and are thus sometimes enabled to select a few 

 names which sound somewhat like the desired one ; and 

 by further similar treatment of these we usually find the 

 one we are in search of. A similar sound is often a power- 

 ful means of suggesting a lost word, and we have by the 

 above plan always at hand a ready means of making it. 

 We cannot recollect a forgotten idea at all, nor even know 

 that we have forgotten it, unless we are already conscious 



1 Carpenter's Mental Physiology, pp. 467, 468. 2 Ibid. p. 470. 



