Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/171

SOME KEMAEKS ON MEMORY AND INFEEENCE. 157 which carries A& to c may qualify A6 beyond its own nature, and the conclusion therefore may not be true if you predicate it of A6. And so far as in the proper sense we remember, this ignorance and this inability is still implied. 1 In memory the predicate somehoio belongs to the subject by the necessity of the content. The necessity is therefore in- trinsic so far, since it falls within the process. On the other hand, because it is not known to belong intrinsically to the subject itself, we have no inference proper. But though memory is not inference, in all memory an inference is involved. To connect my letter with the idea of last Tuesday I must first of all possess myself of that idea. But this possession involves, as we saw, a process from the present to something different, a process made through and resting on a point of ideal identity ; and a passage of this sort seems certainly to be an inference. From the present Ac I go to the past C because of the c within C, and to go other- wise is not possible. You may object that the initial difference here between c and C is really external to c, just as again the further connexions given by memory were admitted not to be internal. This objection goes deep and would raise questions which I cannot discuss in this paper, but for our present purpose it may be dismissed. It would, if admitted, show that we have a defective inference here, as perhaps almost everywhere, and it would not show that we use no inference at all. And the premise which is and must be employed is this connexion of c with its difference, not taken as subject to the condition of an individual case but as unconditioned and simple. The connexion is of course not really simple in an absolute sense, but it is simple in the sense of being taken as uncon- ditioned by the present fact as such. And if you do not use it so, you clearly cannot transcend the present at all. In other words this connexion is not itself an affair of memory or of " matter of fact," since it underlies these as their condition. The connexion is direct, and the process where it is used, even if it is used unjustifiably, I must therefore call an inference. 2 1 Hence to draw an inference from a recollection as such is not possible. For the mere recollection implies that we have not got the premise which we desire to employ. To draw an inference from one individual fact as such to another fact is as impossible in fact as it would be senseless in principle. So far as you remember, we may say, so far you are debarred from reasoning. But on this subject I am confident that better ideas are beginning to prevail both in psychology and in logic. 2 We see here that inference both logically and in time precedes memory. I am convinced that, while in fact many or most of the lower animals certainly reason, perhaps none of them is able to remember in the proper sense of memory.