THE MEMORY STREAM 107 



a book of the ^Eneid after a few hours' study. 

 Did the poetry interest them they would be 

 less successful. In India Mohammedan children 

 will recite chapter after chapter of the Koran, 

 in a language (Arabic) with which they are 

 entirely unacquainted. 



Recollections of the second class are connected 

 by points of contact, which arise out of purely 

 accidental properties, but are sufficiently strong, 

 in the case of trivial minds, to disarrange the 

 sequence in which the original impressions were 

 received. The recollections are linked (in the 

 language of psychology) by " contiguity." Memo- 

 ries which function in this manner are admirably 

 illustrated by the conversations of Mrs. Nickleby. 

 Persons who are afflicted with them are unable 

 to keep to the point, or leading interest, of an 

 anecdote, but wander from one side issue to another 

 in a manner which to listeners is intolerably boring. 



Recollections of the third class are strung 

 together by resemblances that arouse emotional 

 interest. This process is termed " memory by 

 association." My attention is suddenly aroused 

 by an emotion of fear, which has been suggested 

 by the subconscious recollection of a fall from my 

 bicycle. Thence onward there pass before me 

 the church I was on my way to visit, my opinion 

 of its architecture, a tour in France in the course 

 of which I saw a church of similar style, an inter- 

 esting conversation with the cure of the parish, a 

 regret that I was not taught French more effi- 

 ciently at school, and a recollection of recent 

 correspondence in the newspapers regarding the 

 respective educational advantages of classical and 

 modern languages. Each recollection is connec- 

 ted with its predecessor by a link of emotional 

 interest : and the more emotional interests a man 

 possesses the more varied, the more suggestive, 



