ON THE ABEYANCE OF MEMORY. 159 



on the next occasion we remember this idea by reason 

 of its novelty, but if we try to repeat it, we often find 

 the residuum of our old memories pulling us so 

 strongly into our old groove, that we have the greatest 

 difficulty in repeating our performance in the new 

 manner; there is a clashing of memories, a conflict, 

 which if the idea is very new, and involves, so to 

 speak, too sudden a cross too wide a departure from 

 our ordinary course will sometimes render the perfor- 

 mance monstrous, or baffle us altogether, the new 

 memory failing to fuse harmoniously with the old. If 

 the idea is not too widely different from our older ones, 

 we can cross them with it, but with more or less diffi- 

 culty, as a general rule in proportion to the amount of 

 variation. The whole process of understanding a thing 

 consists in this, and, so far as I can see at present, in 

 this only. 



Sometimes we repeat the new performance for a few 

 times, in a way which shows that the fusion of 

 memories is still in force ; and then insensibly revert 

 to the old, in which case the memory of the new soon 

 fades away, leaving a residuum too feeble to contend 

 against that of our many earlier memories of the same 

 kind. If, however, the new way is obviously to our 

 advantage, we make an effort to retain it, and gradu- 

 ally getting into the habit of using it, come to remem- 

 ber it by force of routine, as we originally remembered 

 it by force of novelty. Even as regards our own dis- 

 coveries, we do not always succeed in remembering our 

 most improved and most striking performances, so as to 

 be able to repeat them at will immediately : in any such 



