MEMORY. 649 



The first element whicli such a knowledge involves would 

 seem to be the revival in the mind of an image or copy of 

 the original event.* And it is an assumption made by- 

 many writers t that the revival of an image is all that is 

 needed to constitute the memory of the original occurrence. 

 But such a re^dval is obviously not a memory, whatever else 

 it may be ; it is simply a duplicate, a second event, having 

 absolutely no connection with the first event except that it 

 happens to resemble it. The clock strikes to-day ; it struck 

 yesterday ; and may strike a million times ere it wears out. 

 The rain pours through the gutter this week ; it did so last 

 week ; and will do so in scecula sceculorum. But does the 

 present clock-stroke become aware of the past ones, or the 

 present stream recollect the past stream, because they repeat 

 and resemble them ? Assuredly not. And let it not be said 

 that this is because clock-strokes and gutters are physical 

 and not psychical objects ; for psychical objects (sensations 

 for example) simply recurring in successive editions will 

 remember each other on that account no more than clock- 

 strokes do. No memory is involved in the mere fact of re- 

 currence. The successive editions of a feeling are so many 



* When the past is recalled symbolically, or conceptually only, it is 

 true that no such copy need be there. In no sort of conceptual knowledge 

 is it requisite that definitely resembling images be there (cf. pp. 471 ff.). 

 But as all conceptual knowledge stands for intuitive knowledge, and termi- 

 nates therein, I abstract from this complication, and confine myself to those 

 memories in which the past is directly imaged in the mind, or, as we say, 

 intuitively known. 



f E.g. Spencer, Psychology, i. p. 448. How do the believers in the 

 sufficiency of the 'image' formulate the cases where we remember that 

 aomethiug did not happen — that we did not wind our watch, did not lock 

 the door, etc. ? It is very hard to account for these memories of omis- 

 sion. The image of winding the watch is just as present to my mind now 

 when I remember that I did not wind it as if I remembered that I did. 

 It must be a difference in the mode of feeling the image which bads me 

 to such different conclusions in the two cases. When I remember that I 

 did wind it, I feel it grown together with its associates of past date and 

 place. When I remember thai I did not, it keeps aloof ; the associates fuse 

 with each other, but not with it. This sense of fusion, of the belonging 

 together of things, is a most subtle relation ; the sense of non-fusion is 

 an equally subtle one. Both relations demand most complex mental pro- 

 cesses to know them, processes quite different from that mere presence or 

 absence of an image which does such service in the cruder books. 



