576 PSTCnOLOGT. 



scene. Thus it is that events lived through only once, and 

 in youth, may come in after-years, by reason of their excit- 

 ing quality or emotional intensity, to serve as types or 

 instances used by our mind to illustrate any and every 

 occurring topic Avliose interest is most remotely pertinent 

 to theirs. If a man in his boyhood once talked with Napo- 

 leon, any mention of great men or historical events, battles 

 or thrones, or the whirligig of fortune, or islands in the 

 ocean, will be apt to draw to his lips the incidents of that 

 one memorable interview. If the Avord tooth now suddenly 

 appears on the page before the reader's eye, there are fifty 

 chances out of a hundred that, if he gives it time to awaken 

 any image, it will be an image of some operation of den- 

 tistry in which he has been the sufferer. Daily he has 

 touched his teeth and masticated with them ; this very 

 morning he brushed them, chewed his breakfast and picked 

 them ; but the rarer and remoter associations arise more 

 promptly because they were so much more intense.* 



A fourth factor in tracing the course of reproduction is 

 vongruity in emotional tone between the reproduced idea and 

 our mood. The same objects do not recall the same asso- 

 ciates when we are cheerful as when we are melancholy. 

 Nothing, in fact, is more striking than our utter inability 

 to keep up trains of joyous imagery when we are depressed 

 in spirits. Storm, darkness, war, images of disease, poverty, 

 and perishing afflict unremittingly the imaginations of mel- 

 ancholiacs. And those of sanguine temperament, when their 

 spirits are high, find it impossible to give any permanence 

 to evil forebodings or to gloomy thoughts. In an instant 

 the train of association dances off to flowers and sunshine, 

 and images of spring and hope. The records of Arctic or 

 African travel perused in one mood awaken no thoughts 

 but those of horror at the malignity of Nature ; read at 

 another time they suggest only enthusiastic reflections on 

 the indomitable power and pluck of man. Few novels so 

 overflow with joj^ous animal spirits as ' The Three Guards- 

 men' of Dumas. Yet it may awaken in the mind of a 



* For other instances see Wahle, in Vierteljsch f. Wiss. Phil., ix. 144- 



417(1885) 



