326 The Mnemonic Phenomenon 
surface send toward the center: Consequently only the 
currents sent by complementary rays from this white 
surface can reach that center, and these combined with 
the currents corresponding to the other characters of 
the picture must give it the same aspect as before only 
with a complementary color. 
If the preservation of each memory is due to deposits 
exactly equal in number to the specific elementary ner- 
vous currents which the sensation or complex impression 
had provoked in the nervous system, we are then in a 
position to comprehend also the phenomenon known 
under the name of abridgment. “Every memory,” says 
Ribot, “however clear it may be, undergoes an enormous 
abridgment. The farther the present recedes into the 
past, the more do the states of consciousness diminish 
and disappear. Reviewed at several days distance there 
remains little or nothing of them; for the most part 
they have darkened into a nothingness from which they 
will never again emerge and have taken with them the 
time duration inherent in them. Consequently a diminu- 
tion of the states of consciousness is a diminution in 
time.” 248 
This disappearance of the elementary states of con- 
sciousness producing the abbreviation of memory will 
be due then, according to our view, to the disappearance 
of the secondary mnemonic elements, that is to say those 
provided with a minimum quantity of the respective 
substance, (and of the potential energy which is the con- 
sequence of it), from the series which constitutes the 
entire memory. Possibly this disappearance can be 
caused by the fact that the nutritive fluid has come 
*“Ribot: Ibid. P. 44, 45. 
