i
Memory is a kind of way (or weight—whichever it should be) that the mind
has got upon it, in virtue of which the sensation excited endures a
little longer than the cause which excited it. There is thus induced a
state of things in which mental images, and even physical sensations (if
there can be such a thing as a physical sensation) exist by virtue of
association, though the conditions which originally called them into
existence no longer continue.
This is as the echo continuing to reverberate after the sound has ceased.
ii
To be is to think and to be thinkable. To live is to continue thinking
and to remember having done so. Memory is to mind as viscosity is to
protoplasm, it gives a tenacity to thought—a kind of _pied à terre_ from
which it can, and without which it could not, advance.
Thought, in fact, and memory seem inseparable; no thought, no memory; and
no memory, no thought. And, as conscious thought and conscious memory
are functions one of another, so also are unconscious thought and
unconscious memory. Memory is, as it were, the body of thought, and it
is through memory that body and mind are linked together in rhythm or
vibration; for body is such as it is by reason of the characteristics of
the vibrations that are going on in it, and memory is only due to the
fact that the vibrations are of such characteristics as to catch on to
and be caught on to by other vibrations that flow into them from
without—no catch, no memory.