Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/595

 582 F. H. BRADLEY : WHY DO WE EEMEMBEB, ETC. fronts the same way, and, fixing an ideal point behind, goes on forward to meet again past experiences face to face. We have no practical interest in the mere course of events, and merely to drift with it can be nothing to us practically, even in imagination. We are concerned practically with what meets us and what we go to meet, and this practical concern has formed the main habit of our thought. This, I think, is the real solution of our problem. And we must remember also that a backward direction in thought is the road away from our present selves. These present selves interest us most, and in the main we tend to see the past in its relation to them, and so to take the path forwards from the past that brings us home to them. But if we felt that our selves were ]ying in the past, we should so far tend to go back. Thus in old age or under abnormal conditions, where the present interests us little, we are said to live in the past. But here recurrent natural wants must still keep up in the main the acquired habit of our minds. Our thoughts seem really to go back when the exclusive object of interest is placed far behind us, and we retrace towards it every unwilling advance that has carried us away. Each event adds a link, but our mind moves from each later link back to the earlier ; we are interested in each solely as a thing to be passed by, in the order which carries our thoughts home. And, I appre- hend, memory may here travel back from the later to the former, because for our interest the earliest is the end. Thus, when we steam against the sea from our native shore, if we thought of our- selves we should go forward against the waves. But as our hearts are left behind, we follow each wave that sweeps back- wards and seems to lengthen the interval. And, in remembering objects passed by upon the waters, I think, contrary to our main habit, our memory might take the road that leads to our desire. But nature here, not less than elsewhere, soon effects a change in the course of our thought.