Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/163

SOME EEMARKS ON MEMORY AND INFERENCE. 149 direction of our ideas is naturally opposite, and our associated series, usually if not always, run from the present to the future. We, to maintain our being, must face and must meet with our ideas the incoming waves, and it is this practical attitude against the course of mere events which gives the direction to all our series. I do not, indeed, admit that all our associations are practical, and that is a question I pass by. But the rule that usually they are directed forwards we must admit as true, whatever we may think as to possible exceptions. The current of our lives and thoughts in short runs opposite to the stream of mere event. How then, given the disposition to an ideal series a-b-c-d-e, and given our actual presence at d, can we arrive at the past? The result is gained in this way. Our present has a char- acter associated with a, the beginning of the series, and so, by means of a, we identify ourselves with and pass through the series a-b-c-d-e. But this so far is not enough. This series so far, it will be rightly said, can at best give us a future, and it will not supply us with a past which lies behind us. Our explanation, however, so far was incomplete, and our fuller reply is as follows : (a) In order to perceive the past we must not merely identify ourselves with the beginning of a series, but that beginning must, also and as well, be incom- patible with our present. That beginning must, beside its identity with our present state, have also a further character which prevents identification. If our present is Xd, then, since x is associated with a, we through x ideally reconsti- tute Xa, but the two,Xd and Xa, are or may be incompatible. (6) And secondly, starting from this incompatible beginning Xa, the series leads up to our actual present Xo", and can be prolonged into the future. And this in principle is the ex- planation required for our recovery and perception of the past. I will illustrate this first by a simple example which in part is defective. I have seen a stone thrown and now perceive it at my feet. It is the ideal identity of the stone which reinstates its existence at the point of departure, an existence incompatible with the present. And then that incompatible sameness produces itself in series ideally till it is one with the actual present perception. The illustra- tion is, however, imperfect because it presupposes and makes use of a fixed spatial order, and, whatever may be true of our actual development, I cannot think that in principle such a spatial series is involved. Let us then take another illustra- tion. Let us suppose that in the same locality I am first wet and cold and then dry and warm. Now my personal presence