Page:Memory (1913).djvu/72

 the repressing and hindering ideas become depressed themselves, and that the apparently forgotten idea arises again in perfect clearness.

A third view holds that, at least in the case of complex ideas, obliviscence consists in the crumbling into parts and the loss of separate components instead of in general obscuration. The idea of resolution into component parts recently spoken of supplies here the only explanation. “The image of a complex object is dim in our memory not because as a whole with all its parts present and in order it is illuminated by a feebler light of consciousness, but it is because it has become incomplete. Some parts of it are entirely lacking. Above all the precise connection of those still extant is, in general, missing and is supplied only by the thought that some sort of union once existed between them; the largeness of the sphere in which, without being able to make a final decision, we think this or that connection equally probable, determines the degree of dimness which we are to ascribe to the idea in question.”

Each of these opinions receives a certain, but not exclusive, support from the actual inner experiences, or experiences supposed to be actual, which we at times have. And what is the reason? It is that these fortuitous and easily obtained inner experiences are much too vague, superficial and capable of various interpretations to admit in their entirety of only a single interpretation, or even to let it appear as of preponderating probability. Who could, with even tolerable exactness, describe in its gradual course the supposed overlaying or sinking or crumbling of ideas? Who can say anything satisfactory about the inhibitions caused by series of ideas of different extent, or about the disintegration that a firm complex of any kind suffers by the use of its components in new connections? Everybody has his private “explanation” of these processes, but the actual conditions which are to be explained are, after all, equally unknown to all of us.

If one considers the limitation to direct, unaided observation and to the chance occurrence of useful experiences, there seems but little prospect of improvement in conditions. How will one for example determine the degree of obscuration reached at a certain point, or the number of fragments remaining? Or