Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/515

 502 H. MAUDSLET: mind, the act that was coexistent with it, or immediately antecedent or sequent to it. Repeating the act or imagin- ing its repetition, instantly perhaps the forgotten intention flashes into consciousness. It is not that the subdued tremor is simply raised to the pitch of conscious vibration, but that it is brought into relation with the contiguous activity, whereby it becomes conscious and has its own activity increased : exciting the contiguous activity, we bring the sub-conscious tremor of the lost intention into relation with it and get a rapid interplay of reflections : we remove the block, so to speak, and make the junction of tracks. In this process of reminiscence it is not consciousness which is the active agent going to work to search and find out the lost incident, as though it were a sort of illumination that was thrown into one after another of the dark mental recesses or chambers of memory until what was lost is found. There is no such possibility as a direction of con- sciousness to a particular receptacle of brain or mind, since the consciousness does not rise until the lost incident is found ; it is coincident with or instantaneously sequent to its excitation does not occasion but is the recollection. It is nonsense to speak of consciously desiring or requiring what has been forgotten, since we are unconscious what that is which we desire or require, consciousness occurring only at the instant when it is no longer forgotten. The work is done really by the appropriate mechanism of the mental organisation, and is physiologically mechanical. Observation agrees with theory to prove this. When any one has learned a piece of poetry thoroughly, so that he can at any time repeat it with the greatest ease once he has got the proper start, the repetition is automatic ; he can then repeat it internally or aloud without thinking of the words ; and if he forgets a word or a line of it, the successful way to recall the lost word or line is not to think what it is, not to deliberately exercise consciousness in the endeavour to dis- cover it, but to repeat the words or lines that go before it, while thinking of something else, or at any rate while not thinking of it. The process is notably quite different from one of striving to remember a piece of poetry that has not been thoroughly fixed in memory, when we must think and try to stir all kinds of related activities ; being rapid, instan- taneous and spontaneous, whereas this is slow, labouring and voluntary. In the complete or unconscious memory there is plainly a sort of registration or perfected nervous mechanism of parts answering to the order of the words and capable of being put into action without regard to the