1 66 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



in the domain of the psychic; our past acts no longer, pure memory is 

 not motor; it can become real only by returning to the field of action; it 

 inserts itself into a present sensation and borrows the vitality of this 

 present state. 



Associationism gives at first a very plausible account of memory, 

 recognition and allied topics; but on closer investigation it is full of 

 errors. 



The Fallacy in Associationism 



The cardinal error of associationism is to have set all recollections 

 on the same plane, to ignore the distance which separates them from 

 the present bodily state: that is, from action. It becomes unable to 

 explain (a) how the recollection clings to the perception which evokes 

 it ; (b) why association is effected by similarity and contiguity, rather 

 than otherwise ; and (c) by what particular caprice a particular recol- 

 lection is chosen among the thousand others which resemblance or 

 contiguity might equally well attach to the present perception. 



To complete a recollection by more personal details does not at all 

 consist in mechanically juxtaposing other recollections to this, but in 

 transporting ourselves to a wider plane of consciousness, in going 

 away from action in the direction of the dream. We go to more dis- 

 tant planes. These planes are not given as ready-made: they exist 

 virtually, with that existence which is proper to things of the spirit. The 

 spiritual world is the home of the intellect, which moves between these 

 planes of memory, and creates them anew : it is precisely the function 

 of intellect to connect these planes with action. Action demands 

 similar and contiguous cases. No speculative interest could explain 

 this mystery. Memory has a certain tension which is commensurate 

 with its desire to mingle, or not to mingle, in action. 



But the great final problem for this book is to show how mind and 

 body come together. We have made of our body, and all that surrounds 

 it, the pointed end ever moving, ever driven into the future by the weight 

 of our past. If pure memory is already psychical, and pure perception 

 physical, we ought to be able by placing ourselves at their fusing 

 point, to throw some light on the reciprocal action of mind and matter. 



The opposition of mind and matter, in the usual dualism resolves 



