1 66 Unconscious Memory 



of which we may see in the new forms of life which from 

 time to time have arisen and are still arising, and in the 

 increase of our own knowledge and mechanical inventions. 

 But it is only a very little new that is added at a time, and 

 that little is generally due to the desire to attain an end 

 which cannot be attained by any of the means for which 

 there exists a perceived precedent in the memory. When 

 this is the case, either the memory is further ransacked 

 for any forgotten shreds of details, a combination of which 

 may serve the desired purpose ; or action is taken in the 

 dark, which sometimes succeeds and becomes a fertile 

 source of further combinations ; or we are brought to a 

 dead stop. All action is random in respect of any of the 

 minute actions which compose it that are not done in 

 consequence of memory, real or supposed. So that ran- 

 dom, or action taken in the dark, or illusion, lies at the 

 very root of progress. 



I will now consider the objection that the pheno- 

 mena of instinct and embryonic development ought not 

 to be ascribed to memory, inasmuch as certain other 

 phenomena of heredity, such as gout, cannot be ascribed 

 to it. 



Those who object in this way forget that our actions fall 

 into two main classes : those which we have often re- 

 peated before by means of a regular series of subordinate 

 actions beginning and ending at a certain tolerably well- 

 defined point — as when Herr Joachim plays a sonata in 

 public, or when we dress or undress ourselves ; and actions 

 the details of which are indeed guided by memory, but 

 which in their general scope and purpose are new — as when 

 we are being married or presented at court. 



At each point in any action of the first of the two kinds 

 above referred to there is a memory (conscious or uncon- 

 scious according to the less or greater number of times the 

 action has been repeated), not only of the steps in the 

 present and previous performances which have led up to 

 the particular point that may be selected, but also of the 



