The first element which such a knowledge involves would seem to be the
revival in the mind of an image or copy of the original event. And it is
an assumption made by many writers that such revival of an image is all
that is needed to constitute the memory of the original occurrence. But
such a revival is obviously not a _memory_, whatever else it may be; it
is simply a duplicate, a second event, having absolutely no connection
with the first event except that it happens to resemble it. The clock
strikes to-day; it struck yesterday; and may strike a million times ere
it wears out. The rain pours through the gutter this week; it did so
last week; and will do so _in sæcula sæculorum_. But does the present
clock-stroke become aware of the past ones, or the present stream
recollect the past stream, because they repeat and resemble them?
Assuredly not. And let it not be said that this is because clock-strokes
and gutters are physical and not psychical objects; for psychical
objects (sensations, for example) simply recurring in successive
editions will remember each other _on that account_ no more than
clock-strokes do. No memory is involved in the mere fact of recurrence.
The successive editions of a feeling are so many independent events,
each snug in its own skin. Yesterday's feeling is dead and buried; and
the presence of to-day's is no reason why it should resuscitate along
with to-day's. A farther condition is required before the present image
can be held to stand for a _past original_.
That condition is that the fact imaged be _expressly referred to the
past_, thought as _in the past_. But how can we think a thing as in the
past, except by thinking of the past together with the thing, and of the
relation of the two? And how can we think of the past? In the chapter on
Time-perception we have seen that our intuitive or immediate
consciousness of pastness hardly carries us more than a few seconds
backward of the present instant of time. Remoter dates are conceived,
not perceived; known symbolically by names, such as 'last week,' '1850';
or thought of by events which happened in them, as the year in which we
attended such a school, or met with such a loss. So that if we wish to
think of a particular past epoch, we must think of a name or other
symbol, or else of certain concrete events, associated therewithal. Both
must be thought of, to think the past epoch adequately. And to 'refer'
any special fact to the past epoch is to think that fact _with_ the
names and events which characterize its date, to think it, in short,
with a lot of contiguous associates.
But even this would not be memory. Memory requires more than mere dating
of a fact in the past. It must be dated in _my_ past. In other words, I
must think that I directly experienced its occurrence. It must have that
'warmth and intimacy' which were so often spoken of in the chapter on
the Self, as characterizing all experiences 'appropriated' by the
thinker as his own.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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