|                   
|
On Memory And Reminiscense   
Acts of recollection, as they occur in experience, are due to the
fact that one movement has by nature another that succeeds it in
regular order.
If this order be necessary, whenever a subject experiences the
former of two movements thus connected, it will (invariably)
experience the latter; if, however, the order be not necessary, but
customary, only in the majority of cases will the subject experience
the latter of the two movements. But it is a fact that there are
some movements, by a single experience of which persons take the
impress of custom more deeply than they do by experiencing others many
times; hence upon seeing some things but once we remember them
better than others which we may have been frequently.
Whenever therefore, we are recollecting, we are experiencing certain
of the antecedent movements until finally we experience the one
after which customarily comes that which we seek. This explains why we
hunt up the series (of kineseis) having started in thought either from
a present intuition or some other, and from something either
similar, or contrary, to what we seek, or else from that which is
contiguous with it. Such is the empirical ground of the process of
recollection; for the mnemonic movements involved in these
starting-points are in some cases identical, in others, again,
simultaneous, with those of the idea we seek, while in others they
comprise a portion of them, so that the remnant which one
experienced after that portion (and which still requires to be excited
in memory) is comparatively small.
Thus, then, it is that persons seek to recollect, and thus, too,
it is that they recollect even without the effort of seeking to do so,
viz. when the movement implied in recollection has supervened on
some other which is its condition. For, as a rule, it is when
antecedent movements of the classes here described have first been
excited, that the particular movement implied in recollection follows.
We need not examine a series of which the beginning and end lie far
|