is not at all in a position to repeat it readily backwards if he has not specially studied and practiced it in this form.
The other side make extensive use of reverse associations, as of something quite intelligible, in their explanation of the origin of voluntary and purposive movements. According to them the movements of the child are at first involuntary and accidental. With certain combinations of these, intensely pleasurable feelings result. In the case of movements as of feelings, memory traces remain which, by repetition of the occurrences, are always more closely associated with each other. If this connection has attained a certain strength, the mere idea of the agreeable feeling leads backwards to the idea of the movement which aroused it; then comes the actual movement and with it also the actual sensed feeling.
The conception of Herbart, which we learned to know above (p. 94), holds the middle course between these two views. The idea c, which appears in the course of a series, fuses with the ideas b and a, which have preceded it and which are yet present although becoming dim. If c is later on reproduced, it brings b and a with it but dimmed, not fully uninhibited or clearly conscious. With the sudden arousal of a member out of the midst of a series we survey that which preceded “at once in graded clearness”; but never does it happen that the series runs off in reverse order. To the member which springs up in consciousness there succeed in due order and in complete consciousness those terms which followed it in the original series.
For the purpose of testing the actual relations I carried out an experiment entirely similar to the previously described investigations. Out of groups each composed of six 16-syllable series arranged by chance new groups were derived either through mere reversal of the sequence or by that plus the skipping of an intermediate syllable. Then the two sets of groups were learned by heart, the derived form 24 hours later than the original.
If the scheme for the original form is written as follows:
I(1) I(2) I(3)……I(15) I(16), then the corresponding derived series is thus designated:
In the case of mere reversal of the syllable sequence;
I(16) I(15) I(14)……I(2) I(1),
