When asked to remember “something” indefinitely you cannot: you look
round at once for something to suggest what you shall try and remember.
For thought must be always about some “thing” which thing must either be
a thing by courtesy, as an air of Handel’s, or else a solid, tangible
object, as a piano or an organ, but always the thing must be linked on to
matter by a longer or shorter chain as the case may be. I was thinking
of this once while walking by the side of the Serpentine and, looking
round, saw some ducks alighting on the water; their feet reminded me of
the way the sea-birds used to alight when I was going to New Zealand and
I set to work recalling attendant facts. Without help from outside I
should have remembered nothing.