A human being who should dream his life instead of living it would no doubt thus keep beforeSpontaneous memory recalls differences, habit memory similarity: at their meeting place arises the general ideas. his eyes at each moment the infinite multitude of the details of his past history. And, on the other hand, the man who should repudiate this memory with all that it begets would be continually acting his life instead of truly representing it to himself: a conscious automaton, he would follow the lead of useful habits which prolong into an appropriate reaction the stimulation received. The first would never rise above the particular, or even above the individual; leaving to each image its date in time and its position in space, he would see wherein it differs from others and not how it resembles them. The other, always swayed by habit, would only distinguish in any situation that aspect in which it practically resembles former situations; incapable, doubtless, of thinking universals, since every general idea implies the representation, at least virtual, of a number of remembered images, he would nevertheless move in the universal, habit being to action what generality is to thought. But these two extreme states, the one of an entirely contemplative memory which apprehends only the singular in its vision, the other of a purely motor memory which stamps the note
Cf. Ball's dictum: 'Memory is a faculty which loses nothing and records everything.' (Quoted by Rouillard, Les amnésies [medical thesis], Paris, 1885, p. 25.)
