Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/164

150 p. H. BBADLEY: in this place can by association restore in idea my wet and cold presence in the same place, the two being both the same and yet also incompatible and then an intermediate series, say of lighting the fire, or of the sun's coming out, may unite by an ideal prolongation the first with the second. It is by a leap through ideal identity that we make ourselves one with what is incompatible with our present, and this difference being then connected by a series with our present, we have our past, which is thus given both as sundered and as connected. Such at least is the main principle involved though I cannot attempt to work it out in its complex detail. The most in- structive illustration is probably furnished by the fact of double memory. That past from time to time is remembered or forgotten which has or has not the special quality which from time to time distinguishes the present. In this way at least the facts can in principle be explained, and in some cases the actual quality appears to have been discovered. 1 The above may be made clearer, perhaps, by a reply to a, possible objection. You cannot in every case, it may be said, show that what we remember is thus reproduced from the present, and memory therefore, it may be urged, is im- mediate and inexplicable except of course, like everything else, by physiology. Now I should myself admit that the reason why I remember this thing and not that often cannot be found in my present psychical state. One might indeed urge that the reason is in all cases there and has been simply overlooked, but I am not myself prepared to en- dorse this contention. For our present purpose I w y ould rather take no account of unconscious states of mind, and the contention seems not warranted by the facts which we are able actually to observe. Certainly to argue, on the other hand, that dispositions work without any kind of support from my present psychical state would be quite mistaken. The support is there always, though not always, I admit, the special support to this one disposition against another. And the cause of this special activity, I am quite ready to add, is in some cases to be taken as initi- ated merely cerebrally. But then I object that simply so far and with no more than this we have no memory at all. We have no memory until that which is reproduced is ideally 1 By Janet. See his Automatisme. The principle was long ago laid down by Lotze. I would remark in this connexion that any one who fails to see that the present character of my feeling is a basis of repro- duction, and who argues as if that basis must either be something before the mind, or else not psychical at all, does not in my opinion really understand the doctrine of Association.