The revivals of memory are, however, rarely literal. We naturally
remember what interests us and because it interests us. The past is
recalled not because of itself but because of what it adds to the
present. Thus the primary life of memory is emotional rather than
intellectual and practical. Savage man recalled yesterday's struggle
with an animal not in order to study in a scientific way the qualities
of the animal or for the sake of calculating how better to fight
tomorrow, but to escape from the tedium of today by regaining the thrill
of yesterday. The memory has all the excitement of the combat without
its danger and anxiety. To revive it and revel in it is to enhance the
present moment with a new meaning, a meaning different from that which
actually belongs either to it or to the past. Memory is vicarious
experience in which there is all the emotional values of actual
experience without its strains, vicissitudes and troubles. The triumph
of battle is even more poignant in the memorial war dance than at the
moment of victory; the conscious and truly human experience of the chase
comes when it is talked over and re-enacted by the camp fire. At the
time, attention is taken up with practical details and with the strain
of uncertainty. Only later do the details compose into a story and fuse
into a whole of meaning. At the time of practical experience man exists
from moment to moment, preoccupied with the task of the moment. As he
re-surveys all the moments in thought, a drama emerges with a beginning,
a middle and a movement toward the climax of achievement or defeat.
Since man revives his past experience because of the interest added to
what would otherwise be the emptiness of present leisure, the primitive
life of memory is one of fancy and imagination, rather than of accurate
recollection. After all, it is the story, the drama, which counts. Only
those incidents are selected which have a present emotional value, to
intensify the present tale as it is rehearsed in imagination or told to
an admiring listener. What does not add to the thrill of combat or
contribute to the goal of success or failure is dropped. Incidents are
rearranged till they fit into the temper of the tale. Thus early man
when left to himself, when not actually engaged in the struggle for
existence, lived in a world of memories which was a world of
suggestions. A suggestion differs from a recollection in that no attempt
is made to test its correctness. Its correctness is a matter of relative
indifference. The cloud suggests a camel or a man's face. It could not
suggest these things unless some time there had been an actual, literal
experience of camel and face. But the real likeness is of no account.
The main thing is the emotional interest in tracing the camel or
following the fortunes of the face as it forms and dissolves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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