Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/74

Rh PSYCHOLOGY shrivel up to a dim and meagre representation of life that has lapsed a representation that just suffices, for example, to show us that "our earliest recollections" are not of our first experiences, or to save them from being not only isolated but discontinuous. Such discontinuity can, of course, never be absolute ; we must have something repre- sented even to mark the gap. Oblivion and the absence of all representation are thus the same, and the absence of all representation cannot psychologically constitute a break. The terms " evolution " and " involution " have in this respect been happily applied to the rising and falling of representations. When we recall a particular period of our past life or what has long ceased to be a familiar scene, events and features gradually unfold and, as it were, spread out as we keep on attending. A precisely opposite process may then be supposed to take place when they are left in undisturbed forgetfulness ; with loss of distinct- ness in the several members of a whole or series, there is a loss of individuality and of individual differences. And such loss is not a mere latency, as some psychologists, on metaphysical grounds l or from a mistaken use of physical analogies, have been led to suppose. There is no real resemblance between the action, or rather inaction, of a particle obedient to the first law of motion and the per- sistence of a presentation, 2 which is not even the psychical equivalent of an atom. Repeti- More important changes are produced by the repetition tion. o f p ar t s of the memory -train. The effect of this is not merely to prevent the evanescence of the particular image or series of images, but by partial and more or less frequent reduplications of the train upon itself to convert it into a partially new continuum, which we might perhaps call the "ideational continuum." The reduplicated por- tions of the train are strengthened, while at the points of divergence it becomes comparatively weakened, and this apart from the effects of obliviscence. One who had seen the queen but once would scarcely be likely to think of her without finding the attendant circumstances recur as well ; this could not happen after seeing her in a hundred Generic different scenes. The central representation of the whole images- complex would have become more distinct, whereas the several diverging lines would tend to dissipate attention and, by involving opposing representations, to neutralize each other, so that probably no definite background would be reinstated. Even this central representation would be more or less generalized. It has been often remarked that one's most familiar friends are apt to be mentally pictured less concretely and vividly than persons seen more seldom and then in similar attitudes and moods ; in the former case a " generic image " has grown out of such more specific representations as the latter affords. Still further removed from memory-images are the images that result from such familiar percepts as those of horses, houses, trees, <kc. Train of Thus as the joint effect of obliviscence and reduplication ideas. we are provided with a flow of ideas distinct from the memory-train and thereby with the material, already more or less organized, for intellectual and volitional manipu- lation. We do not experience this flow save very momentarily and occasionally altogether undisturbed ; even in dreams and reverie it is continually interrupted and diverted. Nevertheless it is not difficult to ascertain that, so far as it is left to itself, it takes a very different course from that which we should have to retrace if bent on reminiscence and able to recollect perfectly. The readi- ness and steadiness of this flow are shown by the extremely small effort necessary in order to follow it. Nevertheless 1 So, e.g., Hamilton (following H. Schmid), Led. on Met., ii. p. 211 sq. 2 Cf. Lotze, Metaphyeik, p. 518. from its very nature it is liable, though not to positive breaches of continuity from its own working, yet to occasional blocks or impediments to the smooth succession of images at points where reduplications diverge, and either permanently or at the particular time neutralize each other. 3 The flow of ideas is, however, exposed to positive interruptions Confl from two distinct sides, by the intrusion of new presentations and of pr by voluntary interference. The only result of such interruptions senta which we need here consider is the conflict of presentations that may tioiis ensue. Herbart and his followers have gone so far as to elaborate a complete system of psychical statics and dynamics, based on the conception of presentations as forces and on certain more or less improbable assumptions as to the modes in which such forces interact. Since our power of attention is limited, it continually happens that attention is drawn off by new presentations at the expense of old ones. But, even if we regard this non-voluntary redistribution of attention as implying a struggle between pre- sentations, still such conflict to secure a place in consciousness is very different from a conflict between presentations that are already there. Either may be experienced to any degree possible without the other appearing at all ; as, absorbed in watching a starry sky, one might be unaware of the chilliness of the air, though recog- nizing at once, as soon as the cold is felt, that, so far from being incompatible, the clearness and the coldness are causally connected. This difference between a conflict of presentations to enter con- sciousness, if we allow for a moment the propriety of the expression, and that opposition or incompatibility of presentations which is only possible when they are in consciousness has been strangely confused by the Herbartians. In the former the intensity of the presentation is primarily alone of account ; in the latter, on the contrary, quality and content are mainly concerned. Only the last requires any notice here, since such opposition arises when the ideational continuum is interrupted in the ways just mentioned, and apparently arises in no other way. Certainly there is no such opposition between primary presentations : there we have the law of incopresentability preventing the presentation of opposites with the same local sign ; and their presentation with different local signs involves, on this level at all events, no conflict. But what has never been presented could hardly be represented, if the idea- tional process were undisturbed : even in our dreams white negroes or round squares, for instance, never appear. In fact, absurd and bizarre as dream-imagery is, it never at any moment entails overt contradictions, though contradiction may be implicit. But between ideas and percepts actual incompatibility is frequent. In the perplexity of Isaac, e.g. " The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau " we have such a case in a familiar form. There is here not merely mental arrest but actual conflict : the vpice perceived identifies Jacob, at the same time the hands identify Esau. The images of Esau and Jacob by themselves are different, but do not conflict ; neither is there any strain, quite the contrary, in recognizing a person partly like Jacob and partly like Esau. For there is no direct incompatibility between smooth and rough, so long as one pertains only to voice and the other only to hands, but the same hands and voice cannot be both smooth and rough. Similar incompatibilities may arise without the intrusion of percepts, as when, in trying to guess a riddle or to solve a problem, or generally to eliminate intellectual differences, we have images which in themselves are only logically opposite, psychologically opposed, or in conflict, because each strives to enter the same com- plex. In all such conflicts alike we find, in fact, a relation of presentations the exact converse of that which constitutes similarity. In the latter we have two complete presentations, abx and aby,a.s similar, each including the common part ab; in the former we have two partial presentations, x and y, as contraries, each excluding the other from the incomplete a b. And this ab, it is to be noted, is not more essential to the similarity than to the conflict. But in the one case it is a generic image (and can logically be predicated of two subjects) ; in the other it is a partially determined individual (and cannot be subject to opposing predicates). Except as thus supplementing ab, a; and y do not conflict; black and white are not incompatible save as attributes of the same thing. The possi- bility of most of these conflicts of all, indeed, that have any logical interest lies in that reduplication of the memory-continuum which gives rise to these new complexes, generic images, or general ideas. Having thus attempted to ascertain the formation of Imaj the ideational continuum out of the memory -train, the tlon . mem 3 It is a mark of the looseness of much of our psychological termino- logy that facts of this kind are commonly described as cases of associa- tion. Dr Bain calls them "obstructive association," which is about on a par with " progress backwards" ; Mr Sully's " divergent association " is better. But it is plain that what we really have is an arrest or inhibition consequent on association, and nothing that is either itself association or that leads to association.