Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/159

 NEW SERIES. No. 30.] [APRIL, 1899. MIND A QUARTERLY REVIEW OF PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY. -3SS- I. SOME REMARKS ON MEMORY AND INFERENCE. BY F. H. BRADLEY. Ambiguity of Memory How do we think at all of the past ? By a construction This explained and objections answered No merely successive association Difference between memory, fancy, and thought Mere imagination, what Inference, what Defect of internal necessity in the former Superstition about " abstract " refuted Memory and inference agree and differ, how ? But memory involves inference Its relation to inference in the lower sense How is memory distinguished from mere imagination ? Memory's veracity Memory and belief The meanings of "matter of fact " in connexion with memory and mere imagination. MY object in this paper is to discuss certain questions about the nature of memory in connexion with inference on one side and mere imagination on the other. I have been led to write it partly from a desire to explain and justify the position which I took elsewhere. But the reader need not concern himself with the matter from this point of view, and I shall endeavour to treat the subject independently. On the other hand, even if I were able anywhere to deal satisfactorily with all the problems involved in the subject, the present limits are much too narrow. I can offer no more than a discussion imperfect at the best, and in which the reader must not expect to find anything really new. We may notice first the well-known ambiguity of the word "memory ". I have used, and shall use, the term in what seems its proper sense, the consciousness of past events as having been in fact experienced in my past. But memory is often employed otherwise. It may be taken to embrace all recognition and sense of familiarity, to cover persisting after-sensation and resurgent images, sporadic and undated. 10