ON THE ABEYANCE OF MEMORY. 157 



many past performances strikes a sort of fused balance 

 in the mind, which results in a general method of 

 procedure with but little conscious memory of even 

 the latest performances, and with none whatever of 

 by far the greater number of the remoter ones. 



Still, it is noteworthy, that the memory of some 

 even of these will occasionally assert itself, so far as 

 we can see, arbitrarily, the reason why this or that 

 occasion should still haunt us, when others like them 

 are forgotten, depending on some cause too subtle for 

 our powers of observation. 



Even with such a simple matter as our daily dress- 

 ing and undressing, we may remember some few 

 details of our yesterday's toilet, but we retain 

 nothing but a general and fused recollection of the 

 many thousand earlier occasions on which we have 

 dressed, or gone to bed. Men invariably put the 

 same leg first into their trousers — this is the survival 

 of memory in a residuum ; but they cannot, till they 

 actually put on a pair of trousers, remember which 

 leg they do put in first ; this is the rapid fading away 

 of any small individual impression. 



The seasons may serve as another illustration ; we 

 have a general recollection of the kind of weather 

 which is seasonable for any month in a year ; what 

 flowers are due about what time, and whether the 

 spring is on the whole backward or early; but we 

 cannot remember the weather on any particular day a 

 year ago, unless some unusual incident has impressed 

 it upon our memory. We can remember, as a general 

 rule, what kind of season it was, upon the whole, a 



