672 PSYCHOLOOY. 



is being sung in the adjoining room, we do not retain it • we know 

 vaguely that there is singing going on, and that is all We then 

 stop our reading or conversation, we lay aside all internal preoccupa- 

 tions and external sensations which our mind or the outer world can 

 throw in our way ; we close our eyes, we cause a silence within and 

 about us, and, if the air is repeated, we listen. We say then that we 

 have listened with all our ears, that we have applied our whole minds. 

 If the air is a fine one, and has touched us deeply, we add that we have 

 been transported, uplifted, ravished, that we have forgotten the world 

 and ourselves; that for some minutes our soul was dead to all but 

 sounds. ... 



" This exclusive momentary ascendency of one of our states of mind 

 explains the greater durability of its aptitude for revival and for more 

 complete revival. As the sensation revives in the image, the image 

 reappears with a force proportioned to that of the sensation. What we 

 meet with in the first state is also to be met with in the second, since 

 the second is but a revival of the first. So, in the struggle for life, in 

 which all our images are constantly engaged, the one furnished at the 

 outset with most force retains in each conflict, by the very law of repe- 

 tition which gives it being, the capacity of treading down its adversa- 

 ries ; this is why it revives, incessantly at first, then frequently, until 

 at last the laws of progressive decay, and the continual accession of 

 new impressions take away its preponderance, and its competitors, 

 finding a clear field, are able to develop in their turn. 



" A second cause of prolonged revivals is repetition itself. Every 

 one knows that to learn a thing we must not only consider it attentively, 

 but consider it repeatedly. We say as to this in ordinary language, 

 that an impression many times renewed is imprinted more deeply and 

 exactly on the memory. This is how we contrive to retain a language, 

 airs of music, passages of verse or prose, the technical terms and propo- 

 sitions of a science, and still more so the ordinary facts by which our 

 conduct is regulated. When, from the form and color of a currant- 

 jelly, we think of its taste, or, when tasting it with our eyes shut, we 

 magine its red tint and the brilliancy of a quivering slice, the images 

 in our mind are brightened by repetition. Whenever we eat, or drink, 

 or walk, or avail ourselves of any of our senses, or commence or con- 

 tinue any action whatever, the same thing happens. Every man and 

 every animal thus possesses at every moment of life a certain stock of 

 cl3ar and easily reviving images, which had their source in the past in 

 a confluence of numerous experiences, and are now fed by a flow of re- 

 newed experiences. , When I want to go from the Tuiieries to the Pan- 

 theon, or from my study to the dining-room, I foresee at every turn 

 the colored forms which will present themselves to ray sight ; it is oth- 

 erwise in the case of a house where I have spent two hours, or of a 

 town where I have stayed three days ; after ten years have elapsed the 

 images will be vague, full of blanks, sometimes they will not exist, and 

 I shall have to seek my way or shall lose myself. — This new property of 



