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past their setting in a true context. He selects and or ganizes his material with that object in view. In doing this he is of necessity subject to the general laws and the indi vidual peculiarities of his own mind, which are inevitably reflected in his investigations and formulations ; and so in a very real sense historical narration is subjectively condi tioned. Since, however, the historian s aim is to discover and relate the significant facts of past social experience and thus to act as an organ of social memory, his interest must be objective. The moment any personal interest of his, such as the desire to advance the fortunes of a political party or to maintain a particular theory, influences his selection and interpretation of materials, that moment and to that extent, his work is vitiated as history. In the narration of the or ator it is different. His interest is more subjective, and legitimately so. Whatever his purpose may be, it looks beyond merely a true reproduction of past experience; he aims at producing some more or less definite and immedi ate effects upon his hearers, to persuade them of the correct ness of his opinions and to evoke in them an emotional re sponse of some sort. Naturally, therefore, he handles his material with a certain freedom which is not permissible to the historian.
Whether the story-teller is telling an imaginary story or narrating an event, it is certain that he will be guided in the selection of details by the subjective purpose dominant at the moment. Moreover, he tells the story as a rule when in a state of unusual feeling. Under the influence of high feeling every experience, whether actual or representative, is materially different from what it would be otherwise. In the first place, the feeling is a powerful selective influence determining what details of the present occurrence or of the revived image will receive attention ; second, the phases of the experience which are thus brought into the focus of at tention are exaggerated, are felt to be greater, more im portant than they normally are, and this very exaggeration of them tends to exclude from consciousness other phases
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