296 MAN AND THE WORLD. 



injured, it is clearly as good an explanation to say 

 the injury to the brain destroyed the mechanism by 

 which the manifestation of consciousness was ren- 

 dered possible, as to say that it destroyed the seat 

 of consciousness. On the other hand, there are facts 

 which the former theory suits far better. If, e.g., as 

 sometimes happens, the mian after a time more or less 

 recovers the faculties of which the Injury to his brain 

 had deprived- him, and that not In consequence of a 

 renewal of the Injured part, but In consequence of 

 the inhibited functions being performed by the 

 vicarious action of other parts, the easiest explan- 

 ation certainly is that after a time consciousness con- 

 stitutes the remaining parts into a mechanism capable 

 of acting as a substitute for the lost parts. 



And again, if the body is a mechanism for inhibit- 

 ing consciousness, for preventing the full powers of 

 the Ego from being prematurely actualized. It will 

 be necessary to invert also our ordinary ideas on the 

 subject of memory, and to account for forgetfulness 

 instead of for memory. It will be during life that 

 we drink the bitter cup of Lethe, it will be with our 

 brain that we are enabled to forget. And this will 

 serve to explain not only the extraordinary memories 

 of the drowning and the dying generally, but also 

 the curious hints which experimental psychology 

 occasionally affords us that nothing is ever forgotten 

 wholly and beyond recall.^ 



^ And yet this is a fact which to materialism is utterly inexplic- 

 able. For on a materialist hypothesis the memory of anything 

 must consist of a certain arrangement of certain particles of brain 

 tissue, and in the case of complex facts, the memory would evi- 

 dently require a very complex system of particles. Now as the 

 contents of the brain are limited, it is clear that there can only be 

 a limited number of such systems of particles, and hence a 

 limited number of facts remembered. It would be physically 



