The deepest-seated habits of the brain are its natural and acquired tendencies (§ 57). Hence we remember what fits in with our mental constitution, and forget what does not. Then there are the habits set up by a sudden wrench. We remember vivid, strong, unexpected experiences, and forget the rest. Thirdly, there are the social and profes- sional habits of adult life. We remember the details of our business or of our science, so that the outsider is often surprised at the richness of a technical memory, — not thinking how poor that memory is for other things. Lastly, there are the temporary habits set up by recent events. We remember recent occurrences, for a Httle time, just because they are recent; every dint in the brain, so to say, remains for a while, till it is obUterated by the multitude of still newer impressions.
Putting all this together with what we said in § 57, we cannot resist the conclusion that where habit is, there atten- tion has been. Just as reflex movement arises by way of attentive (impulsive) action, so is the machinery of memory and association set up by way of foregone attention. An idea that fits in with our mental constitution is an idea that we attend to; a vivid, strong, unexpected idea is also attended to; the details of our profession are the things that interest us. Though we remember for a few hours the time that we got up in the morning, the time-idea is doomed to forgetfulness when the first flush of newness is past, simply because we did not attend to it. Let us get up unusually early, and we remember the fact for weeks. — This is how it comes about that the idea attended to is more valuable, more suggestive than other ideas (§ 30). The ideas that come to mind in the most fanciful day-dream, in the me- chanical and inattentive flow of consciousness, would not come unless they had, at some time, been attended to.
Notice the light that this Section throws on the subject of § 83. The ^Th'ee Stages' in Remembering 197 cramming. The student who crams for an examination trusts to recency of experience to carry him through; he hopes that a certain amount of his reading will cling to him for just the day or two that he needs it. Hence cramming is bad, if you want to remember, good, if you want to forget, what you have learned. Professor James emphasises the bad side. ^^ Things learned thus in a few hours, on one occasion, for one purpose,^' he says, ^•cannot possibly have formed many associations with other things in the mind. Speedy oblivion is the almost inevitable fate of all that is committed to memory in this simple way." The late Professor Jevons, one of the best known of English logicians, looked at the matter from the other point of view. It is, he says, " a popular but wholly erroneous notion that what boys learn at school and college should be useful knowledge indelibly impressed upon the mind, so as to stay there all their lives." Cramming '* is the rapid acquisition of a series of facts, the vigorous getting up of a case, in order to exhibit well-trained powers of comprehension." And this, he insists, is a fitting for the business of later life.
§ 83. The * Three Stages' in Remembering. — Psy- chologists often speak of ^ the three stages ' or the * triple process' of memory. The three stages are those of retention, reproduction and recognition. We have a perception: it is retained in the mind, as an idea; the mind reproduces it, brings it out again for use, when occasion arises; then, when it is brought out, it is recognised as the old perception.
The reader will see that these three terms furnish a description of memory which corresponds, roughly, to the facts. Yet it is a description which differs very considerably from the account of memory given in § 78. The difference illustrates the difference between scientific psychology and the popular psy- chology that we spoke of in § 3. Let us consider the terms in order.
(i) It is misleading to say that the mind retains Retention.
Memory ajid Imagination Reproduc tion.
ideas. If the mind were a creature inside of us, it might do this, and we know nothing about the fact. But if our ideas and feeUngs and so on are the mind, an idea which is not now present in consciousness is not an idea at all. No! it is not the mind that is retentive, but the brain-cortex; and even it is reten- tive only in the sense that it acquires habits of func- tioning. The commotion that the perception sets up in the cortex is not bottled away, and kept ready for use; it persists simply in the form of a tendency of the cortex to fall into the same state of commotion later on.
(2) If the mind stored up its ideas, keeping them out of sight till wanted, it would be true to say that they are reproductions of the original perceptions. They would be, in fact, renewed or revived percep- tions. But we saw in § 50 that, while primitive ideas are really weaker copies of perceptions, our own ideas (as a general rule) are not; the original commotion has been translated, by the tendencies of the nervous system, into the language of that par- ticular system: so that our memory of a sound (a musical air) may be a sight (printed words), etc. There need be no scrap or atom of the perception in the idea that means that perception to us. Recognition. (3) Nor docs the mind stand apart from the revived perception, look at it, and then go through a peculiar performance, the act of recognition. Whenever con- sciousness is made up of a central idea, of associates to that idea, and of the mood of confidence, memory is going on.
All these words — retention, reproduction, recognition, recollection, memory, etc. — have come down to The old and us from a psychology which did conceive of the mind psychology. as a living creature of some kind, residing in the body. They were the names given to powers or faculties or capacities of this creature. It laid up its perceptions, as the careful husbandman lays up a stock of grain; it brought them out, in time of need, as he brings out his store of wheat; it gathered up again any that it had let slip, as he gathers up (re-collects) the seeds scattered on the granary floor; etc., etc. We have out- grown these views. But words which have been used as long as these cannot be simply thrown away, and replaced by new terms; they have become a part of the science. We must take them; but we must also reinterpret them. In modern psychology, a memory is an idea accompanied by associated ideas and the mood of at-homeness. Memory in the abstract — tenacious memory, logical memory, poor memory — is one phase or feature of mental constitution. j § 84. Direct Apprehension. — Some perceptions and Recognition, ideas become so familiar, by constant repetition, that direct^app^re- * we do not recognise or remember them, but simply tension, take them for granted. We are then said to * cognise ' them, or to have a ^ direct apprehension ' of them.
Think of the first watch that you possessed. For a while you ' recognised ' it every time that you pulled it out of your pocket; the sight of it called up a flood of ideas — who gave it you, what a good one it is, which of your friends have one and which have not, etc. — and a strong mood of relief: you ' made sure ' that you had it, and were not dreaming. The relief alternated, perhaps, with satisfaction, hope fulfilled. Very soon, however, the satisfaction passed Memory and Imagination What ' tak- ing things for granted means.
The ofcourse mood.
over into equableness, and the recognition into direct appre- hension. You took the watch for granted; of course you had one.
So for the first few times that you apply an algebraical rule, you ' remember ' the rule. It comes up in mind with many associates, and you set about your work with relief and confidence. But as you got)n, solving more and more prob- lems by its aid, you apprehend it directly: of course you use it, — it is the rule to use.
In direct apprehension, all the associated ideas that help us to recognise and remember have fallen away. The perception or idea is so familiar that they v^ould now be useless or worse than useless, encumbrances rather than aids. And the mood of confidence, though it has not wholly disappeared, is greatly weakened. It persists dimly, as a sort of fringe or halo, telling us that the perception or idea is a matter of course. The * at-homeness ' has degenerated into an ^ of-course- ness ' which tinges all the very familiar things of life: our friends' faces, the furniture of our rooms, our own tricks of expression, the round of ideas that carries us through our day's work, and so forth.
This of-courseness is a real mood, a pleasurable state, and not a state of indifference. Its psychological nature is best brought out by contrast. Just as we do not realise the blessings of health till we have passed through a time of ill- health, so we do not know how really necessary to our com- fort the existing order of things is until it has been disturbed. Think of the misery of the weekly ^ turn out ' of your special room! You come home after the morning's work, and find everything looking strangely and uncomfortably new; books and papers are neatly arranged, chairs symmetrically placed, and an unhomely dampness is over all. Gradually things begin to take on their accustomed aspect; you pass from § 85. What Imagination Means 201 relief to at-homeness, and from that to the of-course mood of direct apprehension.
§ 85. What Imagination Means. — Imagination is imagination imaging. And imaging a thing is thinking 01 it m kind: a tree is imaged by a visual idea, a piano note by an idea of hearing, running to catch a train by a tactual idea: the ideas are the same in kind as the perceptions which they represent. In this sense, a mind is more or less * imaginative ' according as it is better or worse constituted to think of things in kind: and the primitive mind — the mind whose ideas are photographic copies of perceptions (§ 50) — is the most imaginative of all.
But visical images are to images in general very and, more much what words are to ideas. That is to say, if a visual imag- man thinks at all in ideas of kind, it is probable that ^"^• those ideas are mainly visual, that the sound and touch parts of his perceptions are translated by the nervous system into visual terms. Hence when we say that so-and-so is 'imaginative,' we mean as a general rule that he can picture things and events distinctly in his mind's eye. A man may have the most vivid tactual ' pictures,' lifelike tactual images, — but still, if he lacks visual imagination, he will be classed by most of his friends as unimaginative.
In strictness, then, the memory-types of Ch. VII. might The danger equally well be termed 'imagination types' {cf. § 77). We ° "^agma- keep the word imagination, in the sense of visualisation, partly because it has come down to us in that sense from the older psychology and is current in the same sense in popular thinking; but partly, too, because it is useful to distinguish the ' imaginative ' mind from minds of unimagi- Memo7y and Imagination Children's lies.
Three ways of imagining.
native constitution. We are apt to think of imaginative people as unreliable people, people who cannot describe an incident without embellishing it. And indeed, this tendency to depart from facts is the besetting danger of the imagi- native mind. For suppose that, as you tell a story, every word that you utter is supplemented at once by some pict- ure. The picture comes up by association; and, since the verbal idea has a whole host of associates, there will almost certainly be elements in the picture that were not in the original experience. You naturally describe these, as well as the true features of the picture. And the process is repeated, till the facts are buried under a mass of fictitious details.
A large proportion of the hes told by young children are of this character. They are not due to any moral defect; it is simply that imagination colours the story in the telling. And as all imagination has upon it the of-course mark (the very fact that we imagine shows that image-ideas are those most famihar to us), the children are unable to distinguish between fact and fancy. They must be taught the distinc- tion, in the course of education, if what begins as a normal feature of mental constitution is not to end as a habit of exaggeration and disregard of truth. Rightly schooled, imagination is of the greatest service in after life (see above, There are three different ways of imagining*. Some people see the visual images as if they were out in space, — at about the same distance from the body that the objects would be which they represent. Others can imagine only when they shut their eyes; the images are seen upon the closed eyelids. And others see the pictures 'inside their heads,' * some- where between the ears.' It seems to be the rule that images of this latter sort are deeper in colour and more transparent, so to speak, than the others: the first two kinds are more definite in outline, but harder and cruder in colour. The psychology of the three sets of images has not yet been worked out.
§ 86. Passive Imagination. — Passive imagination is Passive imagmg that goes on m the state 01 primary passive attention. It is best illustrated by the reading of fiction. The words of a warm, living story are the exact translations of imagined, pictured scenes; and if the reader is to reconstruct the pictures thus transcribed, he must himself be not destitute of imagination. The writer, having elaborated his plot, photographs it in words; the imaginative reader ab- sorbed in the words, reimagines the writer's images.
Another instance of the same kind is afforded by the illus- ^oo^ trations to novels. If they are good, the reader's imagination is assisted, guided, encouraged; if they are poor, it is choked. Cruikshank's and Seymour's and Browne's illus- trations of Dickens are of the former kind: the pictures of Fagin and Mr. Pickwick and Ralph Nickleby help us to imagine the men. Oftentimes, however, a picture shows a lack of imagination on the artist's part. In that case, the reader's imagination is suppressed, because he is held down to the picture, — whenever he begins to imagine a scene, the remembrance of the picture cuts across his images, and by its greater strength thrusts them out of consciousness. The reading of Robinson Crusoe may wholly fail of its due effect upon a child by reason of unimaginative cuts.
Lytton's Last Days of Ponipeii may be cited as a book which shows imagination on the side of the author, and demands it on the side of the reader. Thackeray speaks of the " wonderful ingenuity '' with which Lytton ^^illustrated the place by his text, as if the houses were so many pictures to which he had appended a story." A good part of Mr. Kipling's strength lies in his power to make the reader see, as if with the eye of outward per- ception, the scenes depicted in his stories.
204 Memory and Imagination What was said above of book illustrations applies equally well to the picture-jokes that abound in the comic papers, — the series of pictures which trace the course of some humorous incident. Sometimes the artist leaves much to the reader's imagination; oftener, however, the incident is portrayed in so many stages, with so much detail, that one almost hears him say: '^Vou have no imagination; I must come down to your matter-of-fact level." The consequence is that what should have provoked laughter calls forth resentment.
Active or § 8/. Activc Imagination. — Active imagination is imagination, imaging which has been preceded by a state of ac- tive attention. When a sculptor resolves to chisel a Siegfried, e.g.^ he reviews attentively the whole of the Siegfried legend, picking out a feature here and a feature there, and finally combines the traits se- lected into an * ideal ' image. This actively formed image is expressed in the statue. So when an actor wishes to render the part of Hamlet, he scrutinises every word and action that is set down in the play, and actively ' lives himself into ' the character. The natural, easy, ' of-course ' presentation that he gives when his study is over is the expression of the total Hamlet-image that has been taking shape during the state of active attention. Once more: when a writer of romance sets to work upon a tale, he labours at every detail of his plot as if it were a mathematical problem to be solved. The story, which flows so easily as we read from event to event, — all the threads of incident converging of themselves, as it seems, towards the supreme incident of all, — this story is the verbal translation of the images resulting from all the antecedent drudgery. In short: wher- ever there is * creation,' whether it be in painting or sculpture, in music or in literature, in the mechanic arts or in science, the creation is the image-product of a long term of active attention.
Walter Pater, the greatest master of polished English Style. prose that the century has seen, laid it down as a rule of good writing that one should acquire 'an instinctive feeling for the metaphors contained in words. That is, one should steadily keep in mind the literal meaning of words Hke ' in- volved/ * insipid,' ' essay,' ^ exasperate,' etc., until the writ- ing of the word came to be always and invariably connected with the arousal in consciousness of an image, picturing its root meaning. When we want to copy a diagram, he said, we lay tissue-paper over it, and trace its outline through the paper. Words should be tissue-paper tracings of the writer's images; and should be so true to those images that, when the reader lays the paper over his images, they correspond just as truly to these. — Notice that this is a matter of secondary passive attention with the writer, while it may be a matter either of primary or of secondary passive atten- tion with the reader.
The word ^ creation ' points to a characteristic difference The differ- between imasfination and memory. Memory, whether it is ^^^e between visual or not, is always bound down to the representation and memory. of actual past events. The representation may not be cor- rect: we may have forgotten parts of the event, and features may have been added to our idea of it, by association, which are really imagined features: but none the less reference to the past is implicit in the very notion of memory, and the mark of famiharity inclines us to trust what memory tells us. Imagination,- on the other hand, has a certain freedom about it; we need not image a past experience, but may put things together ' out of our own heads ' and not as they have ever occurred.
The difference has its root in the nature of passive imagi- nation. As you read, e,g., an author's description of his heroine, you read about her hair, eyes, hands, etc., succesj 2o6 Memory and Imagination ' sively; and you consequently image her beauties successively. The hair is seen by itself, the eyes by themselves, the hands by themselves; and each of these separate images is now at your disposal for future associations. Had you seen the heroine, you would have remembered her by a single, total image. — Having your total images thus broken up into detached part-images, you can imagine centaurs and satyrs and mermaids. And when you go from passive to active imagination, — when you are working over a mass of mate- rial for some artistic purpose, — the part-images that you select naturally fall into connections of their own; the re- sult is something new, something which does not copy expe- rience.
The limits of Notice, however, the limits of imaginative creation.
imagination. ^^^ ^]^^ \^y^ q^ imaginative connection is the law of memory and association over again; there is no new ^ power' or ^faculty' of putting images together. (2) The images themselves are the images used in memory: there is no intrinsic difference between the memory-idea and the imagination-idea. You cannot imagine a colour, over and above the colours that you know: the most you can do is to think of the known colours as mixed in unfamiliar ways. All that happens in imagination is that part-images are asso- ciated, with or without effort, to make a total image which does not correspond, as total image, to any definite event of previous experience.
• Hawthorne's Preface to The House of the Seven Gables gives the reader an idea of the mechanics of active imagination; and, if read together with Mr. Lathrop's Introduction, shows the interaction of passive and active attention in the construction of a story. Poe's paper on "The Philosophy of Composition," whether it be wholly or only partly sincere, contains a great deal of sound psychology.
In illustration of the effort of attention that must precede ac- tive imagination one may cite the story told of Michael Angelo. The painter was to decorate the walls and ceiling of a room in fresco. Before setting to work, he spent several days in earnest ■ Qiccstions and Exercises 207 contemplation of the bare surfaces. When remonstrated with for this 'waste of time' he rephed: '' I have to see my picture before I can paint it." — When Sir Henry Irving is rehearsing a new part, the stage becomes gradually strewn with crumpled fragments of paper, on each of which some 'point' of action or emphasis has been jotted down, — material evidences of the labour in art which the same art when perfected conceals.
The perception or idea which starts the series of Affective images m passive and active imagination (the printed imagination. pages of the novel, a photograph of the Bayreuth stage, or what not) ciay be wholly or partly unfa- miliar. The images would, of themselves, always bring the at-home mood with them, and in active imagination a specific form of it, the mood of intel- lectual ease (§ 97). Sometimes, however, the arousal of this mood is prevented: in passive imagination by the novelty, alarming nature, etc., of the central per- ception or idea; in active imagination by the carry- ing over of active attention from the materials of imagination to the finished product (dissatisfaction in failure to realise one's ideal).
Thus our visual idea of a coming examination (passive imagination) is made up of familiar images. But other associates of the word ' examination * may be so disquieting that the mood of at-homeness gives place to that of anxiety. Again: if the sculptor has failed to image his Siegfried dis- tinctly (active imagination) after his active analysis of the Siegfried tale, he will realise that he ' might have done better ' with the theme, and be discontented with himself and his work. — Cf. what was said of recognition: § 79.
Questions and Exercises I. The process of recognition can be studied in various ways, (i) Prepare a series of some 20 of the commoner scents. They can be procured from any chemist, and should be placed in small 2o8 Memory and Imagination phials, securely corked, and wrapped with paper so that the sub- stance cannot be recognised by sight. Let the subjects smell them, one by one, and give an introspective account of the men- tal processes aroused by each. Within the series you will prob- ably obtain recognitions of very different degrees of definiteness; from the puzzled "I know, but can't remember" to a clear-cut set of memory-ideas.
This experiment can be made to throw light upon mental con- stitution. Prepare a longer series of, say, 50 scents; and get as many different orders of scents as you can: flower perfumes, resins, fruit extracts, chemicals, etc. Experiment as before: but note what kind of scent appeals most definitely, and what most indefinitely, to each subject.
(2) The following experiment shows the importance of the word-idea, the name, in recognition. Have a photographer pre- pare for you a series of 7 papers, ranging from black to white through five greys. Pick out of the 7 a series of 5: black, dark grey, grey, light grey, white. Show these to the subject; and after 10 minutes' interval show one of the 3 greys, and ask what its place was in the original series. Mistakes will be very rare, for the reason that the paper is recognised not as a visual quality but by the name ^dark grey,' etc. — Now form a series of the 5 grey papers. As the possibility of naming has grown less, the accuracy of recognition will also decrease.
(3) The effect of lapse of time upon recognition may be tested as follows. Strike 4 notes at random from any octave of the piano. After 10 sec. strike some one of the 4 alone, and let the subject write down his recognition of it as the first, second, third or fourth note of the original series. — Strike 4 others, from a different octave, and wait 20 sec.; then another 4, and wait 30 sec.; and so on. Note the point at which mistakes begin to be made, and the point at which recognition ceases to be possible. The subject should be cautioned to attend to the notes as sounds^ and not to name them.
2. Memory, too, can be approached from various sides, (i) To test the accuracy of memory one may have recourse to two methods. The first is the method of description. Let a num- ber of persons write out from memory a description of a scene familiar to them all. Then let the descriptions be compared, as if they were examination papers, and marks assigned for each of the points remembered. — The second is the method of com- Qicestions and Exercises 209 parison. The subjects are shown a picture of a landscape, a group of pieces of pottery, a furnished room, etc., or listen to a piece of music which contains a number of movements, changes of expression, etc. They are told, in each case, to attend care- fully. After the lapse of, say, an hour, they are asked to recall the prominent features of the sight or sound complex. That done, the perception is repeated, and the memory compared with it.
Notice that the memory in this second case need not be a memory in kind: the picture may be remembered in words, e.g. The aim of the experiment is to discover how accurately a per- ception is remembered in the practical sense of ' remembering,' — how far it is available for use, in the idea-form that the par- ticular nervous system most favours.
(2) The formation of a brain-habit may be roughly tested as follows. Learn a stanza of poetry by heart, reading it straight through again and again till you can just repeat it. Note the number of readings required. Wait till the stanza has been partly forgotten, — say, two days. Then relearn, in the same way. Note the number of readings required for accurate repe- tition. Let the memory lapse again: wait, say, four days. Then renew the readings, — and so on. You will find that the number of readings necessary for accurate repetition steadily decreases with the number of experiments made. For instance: though you may be very uncertain of the stanza on the seventh day, you will learn it in a less number of readings than you did on the third; and though you may have ^ quite forgotten' it on the thirteenth, you will relearn it still more easily; and so on. This advancing easiness of learning is the mental side of the forming of a brain-habit.
3. To test your imagination, (i) read through a scene of some play which you have not seen -upon the stage. Having read it, write out a commentary, saying where the characters are standing from moment to n^oment, how they group themselves, how they should be dressed, what the general colour-scheme of the scene should be, etc. Or (2) take a theme like Hhe founder- ing of a passenger steamer,' or ' an alarm in the Turkish outposts,' or ^ the exploration of a pyramid,' and make a word-picture of it, choosing your words as the equivalents of what your mind sees. Or (3) choose someone whom you know to be of imaginative turn, and describe to him a house or street or room with which 210 Memory and Imagination he is unfamiliar. When he has formed his mental picture, take him to the spot, and let him compare his idea with the reality. Your words, the translation of your images, are thus tested by retranslation into his images.
4. What are the literal meanings of the words insipid, in- volved, essay, exasperate?
5. Should maps be the sole visual aids allowed to the student of geography? Give reasons for your answer.