Phenomena of Memory. 183 



Again : if mind has to be looked upon in this way 

 it is no wonder that the records of memory should be 

 indelible. In point of fact, the reasons for concluding 

 that mind is superior to space necessitate a similar 

 conclusion with respect to time. The eZ&oXoi> is time- 

 bound as well as space-bound ; the t'Se'a, from being con- 

 natural with the Divine Being who is everywhere present 

 as the eternal Now, is neither space-bound nor time- 

 bound. This is the Platonic doctrine. And so it may 

 be that the records of memory are indelible because 

 they are inscribed, not on the changeable eZ8a>Xoj/, but in 

 the changeless t'Sea, and the only wonder is that they 

 should ever seem to be erased. 



Again : the view here taken of mind sheds not a little 

 light upon the association of ideas. For if the ground 

 once occupied by the mind be never vacated, does it 

 not follow that the subjects or objects appropriated must 

 ever remain in that particular relation to each other 

 which they occupied in the first instance, so that for the 

 memory to go back along any one chain of thought to 

 any one link in that chain is of necessity to bring to the 

 mind's eye the overlappings of the adjoining links ? 



Again : in this view of memory there is what would 

 seem to be a sort of explanation of the strange back- 

 ward way in which memory fails in old age, or under 

 the ravages of certain brain-diseases. In this failure 

 recent events are forgotten first, then those which are 

 less and less recent in turn, until at last all that is re- 

 membered has to do only with early life. Some years ago, 

 for example, I saw a french widow lady whose case sup- 

 plies a memorable instance of the way in which these 

 results are brought about by disease, the case being one 

 of relapsing mania, with epileptiform symptoms, rapidly 

 passing into dementia. Until she reached her sixteenth 



