to consciousness; it answers with difficulty to the summons of the will. In order to exercise it, we should accustom ourselves to retaining, for instance, several arrangements of points at once, without even thinking of counting them[1]: we must imitate in some sort the instantaneity of this memory in order to attain to its mastery. Even so it remains capricious in its manifestations; and as the recollections which it brings us are akin to dreams, its more regular intrusion into the life of the mind may seriously disturb intellectual equilibrium.
What this memory is, whence it is derived and how it works, will be shown in the next chapter. For the moment, the schematic conception will be enough. So we shall merely sum up the preceding paragraphs and say that the past appears indeed to be stored up, as we had surmised, under two extreme forms: on the one hand, motor mechanisms which make use of it; on the other, personal memory-images which picture all past events with their outline, their colour and their place in time. Of these two memories the first follows the direction of nature; the second, left to itself, would rather go the contrary way. The first, conquered by effort, remains dependent upon our will; the second, entirely spontaneous, is as capricious in reproducing as it is faithful in preserving. The only regular and
- ↑ Kay, Memory and how to improve it. New York, 1888.
