68 Unconscious Memory 



relation to the object of his inquiry. When at this point 

 he observes how one idea gives rise to another, how closely 

 idea is connected with sensation and sensation with will, 

 and how thought, again, and feeling are inseparable from 

 one another, he will be compelled to suppose corresponding 

 successions of material processes, which generate and are 

 closely connected with one another, and which attend 

 the whole machinery of conscious life, according to the 

 law of the functional interdependence of matter and 

 consciousness. 



After this explanation I shall venture to regard under 

 a single aspect a great series of phenomena which apparently 

 have nothing to do with one another, and which belong 

 partly to the conscious and partly to the unconscious 

 life of organised beings. I shall regard them as the outcome 

 of one and the same primary force of organised matter — 

 namely, its memory or power of reproduction. 



The word " memory " is often understood as though it 

 meant nothing more than our faculty of intentionally 

 reproducing ideas or series of ideas. But when the figures 

 and events of bygone days rise up again unbidden in our 

 minds, is not this also an act of recollection or memory ? 

 We have a perfect right to extend our conception of 

 memory so as to make it embrace involuntary reproductions 

 of sensations, ideas, perceptions, and efforts ; but we find, 

 on having done so, that we have so far enlarged her bound- 

 aries that she proves to be an ultimate and original power, 

 the source, and at the same time the unifying bond, of our 

 whole conscious life. 



We know that when an impression, or a series of im- 

 pressions, has been made upon our senses for a long time, 

 and always in the same way, it may come to impress itself 

 in such a manner upon the so-caUed sense-memory that 

 hours afterwards, and though a hundred other things 

 have occupied our attention meanwhile, it will yet return 



