lated layers are pushed to one side, then, of course, that which was hidden beneath must appear, after whatever lapse of time, in its original and still existent vividness.[1]
For others[2] the ideas, the persisting images, suffer changes more and more affect their nature; the concept of obscuration comes in here. Older ideas are repressed and forced to sink down, so to speak, by the more recent ones. As time passes one of these general qualities, inner clearness and intensity of consciousness, suffers damage. Connections of ideas and series of ideas are subject to the same process of progressive weakening; it is furthered by a resolution of the ideas into their components, as a result of which the now but loosely connected members are eventually united in new combinations. The complete disappearance of the more and more repressed ideas occurs only after a long time. But one should not imagine the repressed ideas in their time of obscuration to be pale images, but rather to be tendencies, “dispositions,” to recreate the image contents forced to sink down. If these dispositions are somehow supported and strengthened, it may happen at any one moment that
- ↑ This is the opinion of Aristotle and is still authoritative for many people. Lately, for instance, Delboeuf has taken it up again, and has used it as a complement to his “théorie générale de la sensibilité.” In his article, Le sommeil et les rêves (Rev. Philos. IX, p. 153 f.), he says: “Nous voyons maintenant que tout acte de sentiment, de pensée ou de volition en vertu d’une loi universelle imprime en nous une trace plus ou moins profonde, mais indélébile, généralement gravée sur une infinité de traits antérieurs, surchargée plus tard d’une autre infinité de linéaments de toute nature, mais dont l’écriture est néanmoins indéfiniment susceptible de reparaître vive et nette au jour.” (We see now that by a general law every act of feeling, thought or will leaves a more or less deep but indelible impress upon our mind, that such a tracing is usually graven upon an infinite number of previous traces and later is itself overlaid with innumerable others but nevertheless is still capable of vivid and clear reappearance.) It is true that he proceeds: “néanmoins…il y a quelque vérité dans l’opinion qui veut que la mémoire non seulement se fatigue mais s’oblitère” (nevertheless…there is some truth in the opinion that memory not only becomes fatigued but that it disappears”), but he explains this by the theory that one memory might hinder another from appearing. “Si un souvenir ne chasse pas l’autre, on peut du moins prétendre qu’un souvenir empeche l’autre et qu’ainsi pour la substance cérébrale, chez l’individu, il y a un maximum de saturation.” (If one recollection does not actually drive out another, it may at least be maintained that one recollection hinders the other and that thus the brain of each individual is saturated.)
The curious theory of Bain and others that each idea is lodged in a separate ganglion cell, an hypothesis impossible both psychologically and physiologically, is also rooted to a certain extent in Aristotle’s view.
- ↑ Herbart and his adherents. See, for instance, Waitz, Lehrbuch der Psychologie Sect. 16.
