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remembered event. There may be a specific feeling which could be
called the feeling of “pastness,” especially where immediate
memory is concerned. But apart from this, there are other marks.
One of these is context. A recent memory has, usually, more
context than a more distant one. When a remembered event has a
remembered context, this may occur in two ways, either (a) by
successive images in the same order as their prototypes, or (b)
by remembering a whole process simultaneously, in the same way in
which a present process may be apprehended, through akoluthic
sensations which, by fading, acquire the mark of just-pastness in
an increasing degree as they fade, and are thus placed in a
series while all sensibly present. It will be context in this
second sense, more specially, that will give us a sense of the
nearness or remoteness of a remembered event.
There is, of course, a difference between knowing the temporal
relation of a remembered event to the present, and knowing the
time-order of two remembered events. Very often our knowledge of
the temporal relation of a remembered event to the present is
inferred from its temporal relations to other remembered events.
It would seem that only rather recent events can be placed at all
accurately by means of feelings giving their temporal relation to
the present, but it is clear that such feelings must play an
essential part in the process of dating remembered events.
We may say, then, that images are regarded by us as more or less
accurate copies of past occurrences because they come to us with
two sorts of feelings: (1) Those that may be called feelings of
familiarity; (2) those that may be collected together as feelings
giving a sense of pastness. The first lead us to trust our
memories, the second to assign places to them in the time-order.
We have now to analyse the memory-belief, as opposed to the
characteristics of images which lead us to base memory-beliefs
upon them.
If we had retained the “subject” or “act” in knowledge, the whole
problem of memory would have been comparatively simple. We could
then have said that remembering is a direct relation between the
present act or subject and the past occurrence remembered: the
act of remembering is present, though its object is past. But the
rejection of the subject renders some more complicated theory
necessary. Remembering has to be a present occurrence in some way
resembling, or related to, what is remembered. And it is
difficult to find any ground, except a pragmatic one, for
supposing that memory is not sheer delusion, if, as seems to be
the case, there is not, apart from memory, any way of
ascertaining that there really was a past occurrence having the
required relation to our present remembering. What, if we
followed Meinong’s terminology, we should call the “object” in
memory, i.e. the past event which we are said to be remembering,
is unpleasantly remote from the “content,” i.e. the present
mental occurrence in remembering. There is an awkward gulf
between the two, which raises difficulties for the theory of
knowledge. But we must not falsify observation to avoid
theoretical difficulties. For the present, therefore, let us
forget these problems, and try to discover what actually occurs
in memory.
Some points may be taken as fixed, and such as any theory of
memory must arrive at. In this case, as in most others, what may
be taken as certain in advance is rather vague. The study of any
topic is like the continued observation of an object which is
approaching us along a road: what is certain to begin with is the
quite vague knowledge that there is SOME object on the road. If
you attempt to be less vague, and to assert that the object is an
elephant, or a man, or a mad dog, you run a risk of error; but
the purpose of continued observation is to enable you to arrive
at such more precise knowledge. In like manner, in the study of
memory, the certainties with which you begin are very vague, and
the more precise propositions at which you try to arrive are less
certain than the hazy data from which you set out. Nevertheless,
in spite of the risk of error, precision is the goal at which we
must aim.
The first of our vague but indubitable data is that there is
knowledge of the past. We do not yet know with any precision what
we mean by “knowledge,” and we must admit that in any given
instance our memory may be at fault. Nevertheless, whatever a
sceptic might urge in theory, we cannot practically doubt that we
got up this morning, that we did various things yesterday, that a
great war has been taking place, and so on. How far our knowledge
of the past is due to memory, and how far to other sources, is of
course a matter to be investigated, but there can be no doubt
that memory forms an indispensable part of our knowledge of the
past.
The second datum is that we certainly have more capacity for
knowing the past than for knowing the future. We know some things
about the future, for example what eclipses there will be; but
this knowledge is a matter of elaborate calculation and
inference, whereas some of our knowledge of the past comes to us
without effort, in the same sort of immediate way in which we
acquire knowledge of occurrences in our present environment. We
might provisionally, though perhaps not quite correctly, define
“memory” as that way of knowing about the past which has no
analogue in our knowledge of the future; such a definition would
at least serve to mark the problem with which we are concerned,
though some expectations may deserve to rank with memory as
regards immediacy.
A third point, perhaps not quite so certain as our previous two,
is that the truth of memory cannot be wholly practical, as
pragmatists wish all truth to be. It seems clear that some of the
things I remember are trivial and without any visible importance
for the future, but that my memory is true (or false) in virtue
of a past event, not in virtue of any future consequences of my
belief. The definition of truth as the correspondence between
beliefs and facts seems peculiarly evident in the case of memory,
as against not only the pragmatist definition but also the
idealist definition by means of coherence. These considerations,
however, are taking us away from psychology, to which we must now
return.
It is important not to confuse the two forms of memory which
Bergson distinguishes in the second chapter of his “Matter and
Memory,” namely the sort that consists of habit, and the sort
that consists of independent recollection. He gives the instance
of learning a lesson by heart: when I know it by heart I am said
to “remember” it, but this merely means that I have acquired
certain habits; on the other hand, my recollection of (say) the
second time I read the lesson while I was learning it is the
recollection of a unique event, which occurred only once. The
recollection of a unique event cannot, so Bergson contends, be
wholly constituted by habit, and is in fact something radically
different from the memory which is habit. The recollection alone
is true memory. This distinction is vital to the understanding of
memory. But it is not so easy to carry out in practice as it is
to draw in theory. Habit is a very intrusive feature of our
mental life, and is often present where at first sight it seems
not to be. There is, for example, a habit of remembering a unique
event. When we have once described the event, the words we have
used easily become habitual. We may even have used words to
describe it to ourselves while it was happening; in that case,
the habit of these words may fulfil the function of Bergson’s
true memory, while in reality it is nothing but habit-memory. A
gramophone, by the help of suitable records, might relate to us
the incidents of its past; and people are not so different from
gramophones as they like to believe.
In spite, however, of a difficulty in distinguishing the two
forms of memory in practice, there can be no doubt that both
forms exist. I can set to work now to remember things I never
remembered before, such as what I had to eat for breakfast this
morning, and it can hardly be wholly habit that enables me to do
this. It is this sort of occurrence that constitutes the essence
of memory Until we have analysed what happens in such a case as
this, we have not succeeded in understanding memory.
The sort of memory with which we are here concerned is the sort
which is a form of knowledge. Whether knowledge itself is
reducible to habit is a question to which I shall return in a
later lecture; for the present I am only anxious to point out
that, whatever the true analysis of knowledge may be, knowledge
of past occurrences is not proved by behaviour which is due to
past experience. The fact that a man can recite a poem does not
show that he remembers any previous occasion on which he has
recited or read it. Similarly, the performances of animals in
getting out of cages or mazes to which they are accustomed do not
prove that they remember having been in the same situation
before. Arguments in favour of (for example) memory in plants are
only arguments in favour of habit-memory, not of knowledge-memory. Samuel Butler’s arguments in favour of the view that an
animal remembers something of the lives of its ancestors* are,
when examined, only arguments in favour of habit-memory. Semon’s
two books, mentioned in an earlier lecture, do not touch
knowledge-memory at all closely. They give laws according to
which images of past occurrences come into our minds, but do not
discuss our belief that these images refer to past occurrences,
which is what constitutes knowledge-memory. It is this that is of
interest to theory of knowledge. I shall speak of it as “true”
memory, to distinguish it from mere habit acquired through past
experience. Before considering true memory, it will be well to
consider two things which are on the way towards memory, namely
the feeling of familiarity and recognition.
* See his “Life and Habit and Unconscious Memory.”
We often feel that something in our sensible environment is
familiar, without having any definite recollection of previous
occasions on which we have seen it. We have this feeling normally
in places where we have often been before—at home, or in
well-known streets. Most people and animals find it essential to
their happiness to spend a good deal of their time in familiar
surroundings, which are especially comforting when any danger
threatens. The feeling of familiarity has all sorts of degrees,
down to the stage where we dimly feel that we have seen a person
before. It is by no means always reliable; almost everybody has
at some time experienced the well-known illusion that all that is
happening now happened before at some time. There are occasions
when familiarity does not attach itself to any definite object,
when there is merely a vague feeling that SOMETHING is familiar.
This is illustrated by Turgenev’s “Smoke,” where the hero is long
puzzled by a haunting sense that something in his present is
recalling something in his past, and at last traces it to the
smell of heliotrope. Whenever the sense of familiarity occurs
without a definite object, it leads us to search the environment
until we are satisfied that we have found the appropriate object,
which leads us to the judgment: “THIS is familiar.” I think
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