646 PSYCHOLOGY. 



Exner writes : 



•' Impressions to which we are inattentive leave so brief an image in 

 the memory that it is usually overlooked. When deeply absorbed, we 

 do not hear the clock strike. But our attention may awake after the 

 striking has ceased, and we may then count off the strokes. Such ex- 

 amples are often found in daily life. We can also prove the existence 

 of this primary memory-image, as it may be called, in another person, 

 even when his attention is completely absorbed elsewhere. Ask some- 

 one, e.g., to count the lines of a printed page as fast as he can, and 

 whilst this is going on walk a few steps about the room. Then, when 

 the person has done counting, ask him where you stood. He will 

 always reply quite definitely that you have walked. Analogous experi- 

 ments may be made with vision. This primary memory-image is, 

 whether attention have been turned to the impression or not, an ex- 

 tremely lively one, but is sulijectively quite distinct from every sort of 

 after-image or hallucination. ... It vanishes, if not caught by atten- 

 tion, in the course of a few seconds. Even when the original impression 

 is attended to, the liveliness of its imnge in memory fades fast." * 



The physical condition in the nerve-tissue of this pri- 

 mary memory is called by Ricliet ' elementary memory.' f I 

 much prefer to reserve the word memory for the conscious 

 phenomenon. What happens in the nerve- tissue is but an 

 example of that plasticity or of semi-inertness, yielding 

 to change, but not yielding instantly or wholly, and never 

 quite recovering the original form, which, in Chapter V, we 

 saw to be the groundwork of habit. Elementary Imhit 

 would be the better name for what Professor Richet means. 

 Well, the first manifestation of elementary habit is the 

 slow dying away of an impressed movement on the neural 

 matter, and its first effect in consciousness is this so-called 

 elementary memory. But what elementary memory makes 

 us aware of is the just past. The objects w^e feel in this 

 directly intuited past differ from properly recollected ob- 

 jects. An object which is recollected, in the proper sense 

 of that term, is one which has been absent from conscious- 

 ness altogether, and now revives anew. It is brought back, 

 recalled, fished up, so to speak, from a reservoir in which, 

 with countless other objects, it lay buried and lost from 

 view. But an object of primary memory is not thus 



* Hermann's Hdbch., ii. 2. 282. 

 t Rev. Philos., 562. 



