A general feeling of the past direction in time, then, a particular date conceived as lying along that direction, and defined by its name or phenomenal contents, an event imagined as located therein, and owned as part of my experience,--such are the elements of every object of memory. =Retention and Recall.=--Such being the phenomenon of memory, or the analysis of its object, can we see how it comes to pass? can we lay bare its causes? Its complete exercise presupposes two things: 1) The _retention_ of the remembered fact; and 2) Its _reminiscence_, _recollection_, _reproduction_, or _recall_. Now _the cause both of retention and of recollection is the law of habit in the nervous system, working as it does in the 'association of ideas.'_ =Association explains Recall.=--Associationists have long explained _recollection_ by association. James Mill gives an account of it which I am unable to improve upon, unless it might be by translating his word 'idea' into 'thing thought of,' or 'object.' "There is," he says, "a state of mind familiar to all men, in which we are said to remember. In this state it is certain we have not in the mind the idea which we are trying to have in it. How is it, then, that we proceed, in the course of our endeavor, to procure its introduction into the mind? If we have not the idea itself, we have certain ideas connected with it. We run over those ideas, one after another, in hopes that some one of them will suggest the idea we are in quest of; and if any one of them does, it is always one so connected with it as to call it up in the way of association. I meet an old acquaintance, whose name I do not remember, and wish to recollect. I run over a number of names, in hopes that some of them may be associated with the idea of the individual. I think of all the circumstances in which I have seen him engaged; the time when I knew him, the persons along with whom I knew him, the things he did, or the things he suffered; and if I chance upon any idea with which the name is associated, then immediately I have the recollection; if not, my pursuit of it is vain. There is another set of cases, very familiar, but affording very important evidence on the subject. It frequently happens that there are matters which we desire not to forget. What is the contrivance to which we have recourse for preserving the memory--that is, for making sure that it will be called into existence when it is our wish that it should? All men invariably employ the same expedient. They endeavor to form an association between the idea of the thing to be remembered and some sensation, or some idea, which they know beforehand will occur at or near the time when they wish the remembrance to be in their minds. If this association is formed and the association or idea with which it has been formed occurs, the sensation, or idea, calls up the remembrance, and the object of him who formed the association is attained. To use a vulgar instance: a man