So far I have been speaking of the passive processes by which the past
comes to wear a new face to our imaginations. In these our present
habits of feeling and thinking take no part; all is the work of the
past, of the decay of memory, and the gradual confusion of images. This
process of disorganization may be likened to the action of damp on some
old manuscript, obliterating some parts, altering the appearance of
others, and even dislocating certain portions. Besides this passive
process of transformation, there is a more active one in which our
present minds co-operate. In memory, as in perception and introspection,
there is a process of preparation or preadjustment of mind, and here
will be found room for what I had called active error. This may be
illustrated by the operation of "interpreting" an old manuscript which
has got partially obliterated, or of "restoring" a faded picture; in
each of which operations error will be pretty sure to creep in through
an importation of the restorer's own ideas into the relic of the past.
Just as when distant objects are seen mistily our imaginations come into
play, leading us to fancy that we see something completely and
distinctly, so when the images of memory become dim, our present
imagination helps to restore them, putting a new patch into the old
garment. If only there is some relic of the past event preserved, a bare
suggestion of the way in which it may have happened will often suffice
to produce the conviction that it actually did happen in this way. The
suggestions that naturally arise in our minds at such times will bear
the stamp of our present modes of experience and habits of thought.
Hence, in trying to reconstruct the remote past, we are constantly in
danger of importing our present selves into our past selves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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