vin PRACTICAL JUDGMENT 157 



There is, however, another cause of retention to be con- 

 sidered besides frequency, namely, the vividness of an 

 experience or the emotional interest attending it. In our 

 own experience, we know that strong emotion lends a 

 peculiar vividness to surrounding details so that very often 

 trivial things that happened in a moment of great stress 

 remain stamped in the memory for life. This vividness of 

 irrelevant detail may be used to express a feeling which 

 otherwise could not find utterance. 



" All's over, then does truth sound bitter 



As one at first believes ? 

 Hark, 'tis the sparrows' goodnight twitter 

 About your cottage eaves ! 



And the leafbuds on the vine are woolly, 



I noticed that, to-day ; 

 One day more bursts them open fully : 



You know the red turns grey." 



But cases of deep emotion stand by themselves. In a 

 general way, it appears from a series of experiments con- 

 ducted by Miss M. W. Calkins, that frequency is more 

 powerful than vividness as a cause of association. 1 It is 

 further clear that the influence of feeling, or other intense 

 experience, would only extend to experiences close to it in 

 time. 2 



the part which intelligence does not grasp. I think therefore primd 

 facie we may use rapidity of initial learning as a test of the higher 

 processes except where we are dealing with feelings operating directly 

 upon response. 



It may be added then if a habit involving a train of connected 

 elements is to be learnt by assimilation, numerous instances seem 

 necessary, since at least one is required for each step. Thus chickens 

 may respond with much excitement to the footsteps of the feeder. 

 The excitement must have attached itself presumably first to the grain, 

 then perhaps to the motions of scattering it, then to the feeder himself, 

 and then to his footstep. If a connection were established between 

 the first and last links in such a chain by a single experience it would, 

 I think, be very strong evidence of definite memory. 



1 "Association" (Psych. Rev. Monograph Supplement), pp. 55, 56. 

 Miss Calkins points out correctly that the vividness procurable in an 

 experiment is not comparable to that of " richly emotional experiences." 



2 Two subordinate points of importance remain to be noticed. In a 

 series of associations, A, B, c, D, E, the natural tendency is for A to 

 excite B, B to excite C, and so forth. But A also acquires a certain 

 power of exciting c, or even D or E, without the intermediates. This 



