Refutation 165 



come of certain antecedents is not to destroy them : 

 granted that they are — a man does not cease to be a man 

 when Vv'e reflect that he has had a father and mother, nor 

 do will and memory cease to be will and memory on the 

 ground that they cannot come causeless. They are mani- 

 fest minute by minute to the perception of all sane people, 

 and this tribunal, though not infallible, is nevertheless our 

 ultimate court of appeal — the final arbitrator in all dis- 

 puted cases. 



We must remember that there is no action, however 

 original or peculiar, which is not in respect of far the 

 greater number of its details founded upon memory. If a 

 desperate man blows his brains out — an action which he 

 can do once in a lifetime only, and which none of his 

 ancestors can have done before leaving offspring — still 

 nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of the move- 

 ments necessary to achieve his end consist of habitual 

 movements — movements, that is to say, which were once 

 difficult, but which have been practised and practised by 

 the help of memory until they are now performed auto- 

 matically. We can no more have an action than a creative 

 effort of the imagination cut off from memory. Ideas and 

 actions seem almost to resemble matter and force in re- 

 spect of the impossibility of originating or destroying 

 them ; nearly all that are, are memories of other ideas 

 and actions, transmitted but not created, disappearing 

 but not perishing. 



It appears, then, that when in Chapter X. we supposed 

 the clerk who wanted his dinner to forget on a second day 

 the action he had taken the day before, we still, without 

 perhaps perceiving it, supposed him to be guided by 

 memory in all the details of his action, such as his taking 

 down his hat and going out into the street. We could 

 not, indeed, deprive him of all memory without absolutely 

 paralysing his action. 



Nevertheless new ideas, new faiths, and new actions do 

 in the course of time come about, the living expressions 



