[ 36 ] 



inaccurate. Certainly, if it be once granted that 

 there is some correspondence between reminiscence 

 and previous sensation, then it becomes possible by 

 means of records, to test the closeness of that corre- 

 spondence, but before such records can be used it is 

 necessary to have some reminiscence connecting the 

 record with the previous sensation, and we are thus 

 brought back to the original question, how do we 

 come to accept any reminiscence whatever as being 

 a reinstatement rather than an entirely new ex- 

 perience ? Now it is evident that organisms which 

 did not, in practice, take their reminiscences as 

 representing previous sensation could not use them 

 for the guidance of action, and failing such guidance 

 they would not succeed in the struggle for existence. 

 Thus our feeling that reminiscence is a reinstatement 

 of previous sensation must be regarded as an inherit- 

 ance from innumerable generations of ancestors, and 

 on this feeling we necessarily act, in spite of our 

 knowledge that the reinstatement is often extremely 

 imperfect, Take again the much discussed question, 

 (\\*h9/ do we come to attribute externality to stimulus ? 

 or in other words, seeing that our consciousness 

 is concerned only with changes of sensation in our- 

 selves, how comes it that we so universally attribute 

 the origin of these changes to an external world of 

 the not self a world of whose existence sensation 

 cannot inform us ? This also would follow as a 

 direct result of heredity. I have referred above to 



