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 series as being more or less deeply engraved in some mental substratum. To carry out this figure: as the number of repetitions increases, the series are engraved more and more deeply and indelibly; if the number of repetitions is small, the inscription is but surface deep and only fleeting glimpses of the tracery can be caught; with a somewhat greater number the inscription can, for a time at least, be read at will; as the number of repetitions is still further increased, the deeply cut picture of the series fades out only after ever longer intervals.

What is to be said in case a person is not satisfied with this general statement of a relation of dependence between the number of repetitions and the depth of the mental impression obtained, and if he demands that it be defined more clearly and in detail? The thermometer rises with increasing temperature, the magnetic needle is displaced to an increasing angle as the intensity of the electric current around it increases. But while the mercury always rises by equal spaces for each equal increase in temperature, the increase of the angle showing the displacement of the magnetic needle becomes less with a like increase in the electric current. Which analogy is it which holds for the effect of the number of repetitions of the series to be memorised upon the depth of the resulting impression? Without further discussion shall we make it proportional to the number of repetitions, and accordingly say that it is twice or three times as great when homogenous series are repeated with the same degree of attention twice or thrice as many times as are others? Or does it increase less and less with each and every constant increase in the number of repetitions? Or what does happen?

Evidently this question is a good one; its answer would be of theoretical as well as practical interest and importance. But with the resources hitherto at hand it could not be answered, nor even investigated. Even its meaning will not be quite clear so long as the words “inner stability” and “depth of impression” denote something indefinite and figurative rather than something clear and objectively defined.

Applying the principles developed in, I define the inner stability of a series of ideas—the degree of its retainability—by greater or less readiness with which it is reproduced at some definite time subsequent to its first memorisation. This readiness I measure by the amount of work saved in the