3. Revivability depends on cerebral and internal conditions (whatever these may be, known or unknown) rather than on the primary impression itself. To feel emotions acutely and revive them acutely are two widely different operations; one does not imply the other. We have seen that, in many cases, revivability even seems to be in inverse ratio to the intensity of the initial phenomenon. This brings us back to the question of characters. It does not matter whether the impression is a vivid one; what is wanted is that it should be fixed. Often it is heightened by a process of latent incubation depending on individual temperament. Chateaubriand, speaking of a gamekeeper to whom he was much attached, and who was killed by a poacher, says, “My imagination (at sixteen) pictured to me Raulx holding his entrails in his hands, and dragging himself to the hut where he died. I conceived the idea of revenge; I wished to fight the murderer. In this respect I am singularly constituted; at the moment of a blow I scarcely feel it, but it engraves itself on my memory; _the recollection, instead of being weakened, grows stronger with time_; it sleeps in my heart for years together, then the most trivial circumstance awakens it with renewed force, and my wound becomes more painful than on the first day.”[107] Here we have another analogy with what takes place in the order of objective impressions. It is not sufficient to have good eyes in order to have a good visual memory, and I know short-sighted persons whose inner vision is excellent.[108] ----- Footnote 107: _Mémoires_, vol. i. p. 77. The italics are not in the original. Footnote 108: This has recently been experimentally demonstrated; the observations made by Dr. Toulouse (with the assistance of specialists) on M. Zola may be specially mentioned. In this case the coincidence of a somewhat low degree of sensory acuteness with a very high degree of delicacy and precision in revived sensory impression was found not only in the case of vision, but especially in that of smell. (Toulouse, _Emile Zola: Enquête Médico-psychologique_, 1896, pp. 164, 173, 179, 206.)—ED. ----- I may terminate this inquiry, which is a sketch rather than a study of the subject, by reminding the reader that the facts ascertained for the other, the intellectual part of memory, have not been the work of one man or of one day.[109] ----- Footnote 109: