ASSOCIATION. 585 



thought are there, many of them at least, but they refuse 

 to awaken the thought itself. We cannot suppose that they 

 do not irradiate at all into its brain-tract, because his mind 

 quivers o}i the very edge of its recovery. Its actual rhythm 

 sounds in his ears ; the words seem on the imminent point 

 of following, but fail. What it is that blocks the discharge 

 and keeps the brain-excitement here from passing beyond 

 the nascent into the vi^dd state cannot be guessed. But we 

 see in the philosophy of desire and pleasure, that such nas- 

 cent excitements, spontaneously tending to a crescendo, 

 but inhibited or checked by other causes, may become 

 potent mental stimuli and determinants of desire. All 

 questioning, wonder, emotion of curiosity, must be referred 

 to cerebral causes of some such form as this. The great 

 difference between the effort to recall things forgotten and 

 the search after the means to a given end, is that the latter 

 have not, whilst the former have, alread}' formed a part of 

 our experience. If we first study the mode of recalling a 

 thing f Or f gotten, we can take ujd with better understanding 

 the voluntary quest of the unknown. 



The forgotten thing is felt by us as a gap in the midst of 

 certain other things. If it is a thought, we possess a dim 

 idea of where we were and what we were about when it oc- 

 curred to us. We recollect the general subject to which it 

 relates. But all these details refuse to shoot together into 

 a solid whole, for the lack of the vivid traits of this missing 

 thought, the relation whereof !;o each detail forms now the 

 main interest of the latter. We keep running over the de- 

 tails in our mind, dissatisfied, craving something more. 

 From each detail there radiate lines of association forming 

 so many tentative guesses. Many of these are immediately 

 seen to be irrelevant, are therefore void of interest, and 

 lapse immediately from consciousness. Others are asso- 

 ciated with the other details present, and with the missing 

 thought as well. When tliese surge up, we have a peculiar 

 feeling that we are * warm,' as the children say when they 

 play hide and seek ; and such associates as these we clutch 

 at and keep before the attention. Thus we recollect suc- 

 cessively that when we had the thought in question w'e 

 were at the dinner-table ; then that our friend J. D. was 



