Hamilton first used the word 'redintegration' to designate all
association. Such processes as we have just described might in an
emphatic sense be termed redintegrations, for they would necessarily
lead, if unobstructed, to the reinstatement in thought of the _entire_
content of large trains of past experience. From this complete
redintegration there could be no escape save through the irruption of
some new and strong present impression of the senses, or through the
excessive tendency of some one of the elementary brain-tracts to
discharge independently into an aberrant quarter of the brain. Such was
the tendency of the word 'heir' in the verse from 'Locksley Hall,' which
was our first example. How such tendencies are constituted we shall have
soon to inquire with some care. Unless they are present, the panorama of
the past, once opened, must unroll itself with fatal literality to the
end, unless some outward sound, sight, or touch divert the current of
thought.
Let us call this process _impartial redintegration_, or, still better,
_total recall_. Whether it ever occurs in an absolutely complete form is
doubtful. We all immediately recognize, however, that in some minds
there is a much greater tendency than in others for the flow of thought
to take this form. Those insufferably garrulous old women, those dry and
fanciless beings who spare you no detail, however petty, of the facts
they are recounting, and upon the thread of whose narrative all the
irrelevant items cluster as pertinaciously as the essential ones, the
slaves of literal fact, the stumblers over the smallest abrupt step in
thought, are figures known to all of us. Comic literature has made her
profit out of them. Juliet's nurse is a classical example. George
Eliot's village characters and some of Dickens's minor personages supply
excellent instances.
Perhaps as successful a rendering as any of this mental type is the
character of Miss Bates in Miss Austen's 'Emma.' Hear how she
redintegrates:
"'But where could _you_ hear it?' cried Miss Bates. 'Where could you
possibly hear it, Mr. Knightley? For it is not five minutes since I
received Mrs. Cole's note--no, it cannot be more than five--or at least
ten--for I had got my bonnet and spencer on, just ready to come out--I
was only gone down to speak to Patty again about the pork--Jane was
standing in the passage--were not you, Jane?--for my mother was so
afraid that we had not any salting-pan large enough. So I said I would
go down and see, and Jane said: "Shall I go down instead? for I think
you have a little cold, and Patty has been washing the kitchen." "Oh, my
dear," said I--well, and just then came the note. A Miss Hawkins--that's
all I know--a Miss Hawkins, of Bath. But, Mr. Knightley, how could you
possibly have heard it? for the very moment Mr. Cole told Mrs. Cole of
it, she sat down and wrote to me. A Miss Hawkins--'"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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