162 LIFE AND HABIT. 



In such cases, people are sometimes seen to forget 

 what happened last week, yesterday, or an hour ago, 

 without even the smallest power of recovering their 

 recollection ; but the oft repeated earlier impression 

 remains, though there may be no memory whatever 

 of how it came to be impressed so deeply. The phe- 

 nomena of memory, therefore, are exactly like those of 

 consciousness and volition, in so far as that the conscious- 

 ness of recollection vanishes, when the power of recol- 

 lection has become intense. When we are aware that 

 we are recollecting, and are trying, perhaps hard, to recol- 

 lect, it is a sign that we do not recollect utterly. When 

 we remember utterly and intensely, there is no conscious 

 effort of recollection ; our recollection can only be 

 recognised by ourselves and others, through our per- 

 formance itself, which testifies to the existence of a 

 memory, that we could not otherwise follow or detect. 



5. When circumstances have led us to change our 

 habits of life as when the university has succeeded 

 school, or professional life the university we get into 

 many fresh ways, and leave many old ones. But on 

 revisiting the old scene, unless the lapse of time has 

 been inordinately great, we experience a desire to 

 revert to old habits. We say that old associations 

 crowd upon us. Let a Trinity man, after thirty years 

 absence from Cambridge, pace for five minutes in the 

 cloister of Neville's Court, and listen to the echo of 

 his footfall, as it licks up against the end of the cloister, 

 or let an old Johnian stand wherever he likes in the 

 third Court of St. John's, in either case he will find 

 the thirty years drop out of his life, as if they were 



