You see the enormous importance of this. The lighted portion of the edge was the extent of his memory, faculty or whatever one may call it. But what about that memory's _quality_ as distinct from its extent? Suppose, instead of holding the torch a foot away, he had held it three inches away only? The nearer the shorter--but the brighter; the farther away the longer--but the dimmer. Our childish recollections are intense, but of small things; as we grow older we remember more, but more vaguely.... I find that I shall have to make use of the parallel columns again. Indeed I begin to suspect that I shall have to do so throughout. Was this then the position? BY APPROACHING THE LAMP BY WITHDRAWING THE LAMP He might re-live a given age The intensity would diminish again with great intensity. but the scope of memory would enlarge. Emotion or passion might become He might become comparative, predominant characteristics, critical, philosophic, at the expense of but at the cost of intensity intellectual comparisons. of emotional experience. He certainly would not succeed He might be in danger of in any task that demanded including so much that he width of outlook first of all. would become diffuse and pointless. He might concentrate so brilliantly The speculative man might get as to perform a momentary and the upper hand of the practical sensational feat--say to one and he would fail in a knockout Carpentier. supreme momentary effort--in other words, Carpentier would knock him out. A summer's day in the country It would be merely a matter might be almost unbearably of fresh air and exercise, to beautiful to him. be set off against the working hours lost and the cost of two railway tickets. I am anxious not to go beyond my brief. I knew that for the purpose of his book he was attempting to manipulate himself, but what his success had so far been I did not know. Nevertheless all the possibilities had to be considered, and the more I thought of this one the more it impressed me. For practical purposes, these differences of memory-intensity might turn out to be the pivot on which all else turned.