CHAPTER X.

ILLUSIONS OF MEMORY.

Thus far we have been dealing with Presentative Illusions, that is to

say, with the errors incident to the process of what may roughly be

called presentative cognition. We have now to pass to the consideration

of Representative Illusion, or that kind of error which attends

representative cognition in so far as it is immediate or

self-sufficient, and not consciously based on other cognition. Of such

immediate representative cognition, memory forms the most conspicuous

and most easily recognized variety. Accordingly, I proceed to take up

the subject of the Illusions of Memory.[111]

The mystery of memory lies in the apparent immediateness of the mind's

contact with the vanished past. In "looking back" on our life, we seem

to ourselves for the moment to rise above the limitations of time, to

undo its work of extinction, seizing again the realities which its

on-rushing stream had borne far from us. Memory is a kind of

resurrection of the buried past: as we fix our retrospective glance on

it, it appears to start anew into life; forms arise within our minds

which, we feel sure, must faithfully represent the things that were. We

do not ask for any proof of the fidelity of this dramatic representation

of our past history by memory. It is seen to be a faithful imitation,

just because it is felt to be a revival of the past. To seek to make the

immediate testimony of memory more sure seems absurd, since all our ways

of describing and illustrating this mental operation assume that in the

very act of performing it we do recover a part of our seemingly "dead

selves."

To challenge the veracity of a person's memory is one of the boldest

things one can do in the way of attacking deep-seated conviction. Memory

is the peculiar domain of the individual. In going back in recollection

to the scenes of other years he is drawing on the secret store-house of

his own consciousness, with which a stranger must not intermeddle. To

cast doubt on a person's memory is commonly resented as an impertinence,

hardly less rude than to question his reading of his own present mental

state. Even if the challenger professedly bases his challenge on the

testimony of his own memory, the challenged party is hardly likely to

allow the right of comparing testimonies. He can in most cases boldly

assert that those who differ from him are lacking in _his_ power of

recollection. The past, in becoming the past, has, for most people,

ceased to be a common object of reference; it has become a part of the

individual's own inner self, and cannot be easily dislodged or shaken.

Yet, although people in general are naturally disposed to be very

confident about matters of recollection, reflective persons are pretty

sure to find out, sooner or later, that they occasionally fall into

errors of memory. It is not the philosopher who first hints at the

mendacity of memory, but the "plain man" who takes careful note of what

really happens in the world of his personal experience. Thus, we hear

persons, quite innocent of speculative doubt, qualifying an assertion

made on personal recollection by the proviso, "unless my memory has

played me false." And even less reflective persons, including many who

pride themselves on their excellent memory, will, when sorely pressed,

make a grudging admission that they may, after all, be in error. Perhaps

the weakest degree of such an admission, and one which allows to the

conceding party a semblance of victory, is illustrated in the "last

word" of one who has boldly maintained a proposition on the strength of

individual recollection, but begins to recognize the instability of his

position: "I either witnessed the occurrence or dreamt it." This is

sufficient to prove that, with all people's boasting about the

infallibility of memory, there are many who have a shrewd suspicion that

some of its asseverations will not bear a very close scrutiny.

_Psychology of Memory._

In order to understand the errors of memory, we must proceed, as in the

case of illusions of perception, by examining a little into the nature

of the normal or correct process.

An act of recollection is said by the psychologist to be purely

representative in character, whereas perception is partly

representative, partly preservative. To recall an object to the mind is

to reconstruct the percept in the absence of a sense-impression.[112]

An act of memory is obviously distinguished from one of simple

imagination by the presence of a conscious reference to the past. Every

recollection is an immediate reapprehension of some past object or

event. However vague this reference may be, it must be there to

constitute the process one of recollection.

The every-day usages of language do not at first sight seem to

consistently observe this distinction. When a boy says, "I remember my

lesson," he appears to be thinking of the present only, and not

referring to the past. In truth, however, there is a vague reference to

the fact of retaining a piece of knowledge through a given interval of

time.

Again, when a man says, "I recollect your face," this means, "Your face

seems familiar to me." Here again, though there is no definite reference

to the past, there is a vague and indefinite one.

It is plain from this definition that recollection is involved in all

recognition or identification. Merely to be aware that I have seen a

person before implies a minimum exercise of memory. Yet we may roughly

distinguish the two actions of perception and recollection in the

process of recognition. The mere recognition of an object does not

imply the presence of a distinct representative or mnemonic image. In

point of fact, in so far as recognition is assimilation, it cannot be

said to imply a _distinct_ act of memory at all. It is only when

similarity is perceived amid difference, only when the accompaniments or

surroundings of the object as previously seen, differencing it from the

object as now seen, are brought up to the mind that we may be said

distinctly to recall the past. And our state of mind in recognizing an

object or person is commonly an alternation between these two acts of

separating the mnemonic image from the percept and so recalling or

recollecting the past, and fusing the image and the percept in what is

specifically marked off as recognition.[113]

Although I have spoken of memory as a reinstatement in representative

form of external experience, the term must be understood to include

every revival of a past experience, whether external or internal, which

is recognized as a revival. In a general way, the recallings of our

internal feelings take place in close connection with the recollection

of external circumstances or events, and so they may be regarded as

largely conditioned by the laws of this second kind of reproduction.

The old conceptions of mind, which regarded every mental phenomenon as a

manifestation of an occult spiritual substance, naturally led to the

supposition that an act of recollection involves the continued,

unbroken existence of the reproductive or mnemonic image in the hidden

regions of the mind. To recollect is, according to this view, to draw

the image out of the dark vaults of unconscious mind into the upper

chamber of illumined consciousness.

Modern psychology recognizes no such pigeonhole apparatus in unconscious

mind. On the purely psychical side, memory is nothing but an occasional

reappearance of a past mental experience. And the sole mental conditions

of this reappearance are to be found in the circumstances of the moment

of the original experience and in those of the moment of the

reappearance.

Among these are to be specially noted, first of all, the degree of

impressiveness of the original experience, that is to say, the amount of

interest it awakened and of attention it excited. The more impressive

any experience, the greater the chances of its subsequent revival.

Moreover, the absence of impressiveness in the original experience may

be made good either by a repetition of the actual experience or, in the

case of non-recurring experiences, by the fact of previous mnemonic

revivals.

In the second place, the pre-existing mental states at the time of

revival are essential conditions. It is now known that every

recollection is determined by some link of association, that every

mnemonic image presents itself in consciousness only when it has been

preceded by some other mental state, presentative or representative,

which is related to the image. This relation may be one of contiguity,

that is to say, the original experiences may have occurred at the same

time or in close succession; or one of similarity (partial and not

amounting to identity), as where the sight of one place or person

recalls that of another place or person. Finally, it is to be observed

that recollection is often an act, in the full sense of that term,

involving an effort of voluntary attention at the moment of revival.

Modern physiology has done much towards helping us to understand the

nervous conditions of memory. The biologist regards memory as a special

phase of a universal property of organic structure, namely,

modifiability by the exercise of function, or the survival after any

particular kind of activity of a disposition to act again in that

particular way. The revival of a mental impression in the weaker form of

an image is thus, on its physical side, due in part to this remaining

functional disposition in the central nervous tracts concerned. And so,

while on the psychical or subjective side we are unable to find anything

permanent in memory, on the physical or objective side we do find such a

permanent substratum.

With respect to the special conditions of mnemonic revival at any time,

physiology is less explicit. In a general way, it informs us that such a

reinstatement of the past is determined by the existence of certain

connections between the nervous structures concerned in the reviving and

revived mental elements. Thus, it is said that when the sound of a name

calls up in the mind a visual image of a person seen some time since, it

is because connections have been formed between particular regions and

modes of activity of the auditory and the visual centres. And it is

supposed that the existence of such connections is somehow due to the

fact that the two regions acted simultaneously in the first instance,

when the sight of the person was accompanied by the hearing of his name.

In other words, the centres, as a whole, will tend to act at any future

moment in the same complex way in which they have acted in past moments.

All this is valuable hypothesis so far as it goes, though it plainly

leaves much unaccounted for. As to why this reinstatement of a total

cerebral pulsation in consequence of the re-excitation of a portion of

the same should be accompanied by the specific mode of consciousness

which we call recollection of something past, it is perhaps unreasonable

to ask of physiology any sort of explanation.[114]

Thus far as to the general or essential characteristics of memory on its

mental and its bodily side. But what we commonly mean by memory is, on

its psychical side at least, much more than this. We do not say that we

properly recollect a thing unless we are able to refer it to some more

or less clearly defined region of the past, and to localize it in the

succession of experiences making up our mental image of the past. In

other words, though we may speak of an imperfect kind of recollection

where this definite reference is wanting, we mean by a perfect form of

memory something which includes this reference.

Without entering just now upon a full analysis of what this reference to

a particular region of the past means, I may observe that it takes place

by help of an habitual retracing of the past, or certain portions of it,

that is to say, a regressive movement of the imagination along the lines

of our actual experience. Setting out from the present moment, I can

move regressively to the preceding state of consciousness, to the

penultimate, and so on. The fact that each distinct mental state is

continuous with the preceding and the succeeding, and in a certain sense

overlaps these, makes any portion of our experience essentially a

succession of states of consciousness, involving some rudimentary idea

of time. And thus, whether I anticipate a future event or recall a past

one, my imagination, setting out from the present moment, constructs a

sequence of experiences of which the one particularly dwelt on is the

other term or boundary. And our idea of the position of this last in

time, like that of an object in space, is one of a relation to our

present position, and is determined by the length of the sequence of

experiences thus run over by the imagination.[115] It may be added that

since the imagination can much more easily follow the actual order of

experience than conceive it as reversed, the retrospective act of memory

naturally tends to complete itself by a return movement forwards from

the remembered event to the present moment.

In practice this detailed retracing of successive moments of mental life

is confined to very recent experiences. If I try to localize in time a

remote event, I am content with placing it in relation to a series of

prominent events or landmarks which serves me as a rough scheme of the

past. The formation of such a mnemonic framework is largely due to the

needs of social converse, which proceeds by help of a common standard of

reference. This standard is supplied by those objective, that is to say,

commonly experienced regularities of succession which constitute the

natural and artificial divisions of the years, seasons, months, weeks,

etc. The habit of recurring to these fixed divisional points of the past

renders a return of imagination to any one of them more and more easy. A

man has a definite idea of "a year ago" which the child wants, just

because he has had so frequently to execute that vague regressive

movement by which the idea arises. And though, as our actual point in

time moves forward, the relative position of any given landmark is

continually changing, the change easily adapts itself to that scheme of

time-divisions which holds good for any present point.

Few of our recollections of remote events involve a definite reference

to this system of landmarks. The recollections of early life are, in the

case of most people, so far as they depend on individual memory, very

vaguely and imperfectly localized. And many recent experiences which are

said to be half forgotten, are not referred to any clearly assignable

position in time. One may say that in average cases definite

localization characterizes only such supremely interesting personal

experiences as spontaneously recur again and again to the mind. For the

rest it is confined to those facts and events of general interest to

which our social habits lead us repeatedly to go back.[116]

The consciousness of personal identity is said to be bound up with

memory. That is to say, I am conscious of a continuous permanent self

under all the varying surface-play of the stream of consciousness, just

because I can, by an act of recollection, bring together any two

portions of this stream of experience, and so recognize the unbroken

continuity of the whole. If this is so, it would seem to follow from the

very fragmentary character of our recollections that our sense of

identity is very incomplete. As we shall see presently, there is good

reason to look upon, this consciousness of continuous personal existence

as resting only in part on memory, and mainly on our independently

formed representation of what has happened in the numberless and often

huge lacunæ of the past left by memory.

Having thus a rough idea of the mechanism of memory to guide us, we may

be able to investigate the illusions incident to the process.

_Illusions of Memory._

By an illusion of memory we are to understand a false recollection or a

wrong reference of an idea to some region of the past. It might,

perhaps, be roughly described as a wrong interpretation of a special

kind of mental image, namely, what I have called a mnemonic image.

Mnemonic illusion is thus distinct from mere forgetfulness or imperfect

memory. To forget or be doubtful about a past event is one thing; to

seem to ourselves to remember it when we afterwards find that the fact

was otherwise than we represented it in the apparent act of recollection

is another thing. Indistinctness of recollection, or the decay of

memory, is, as we shall soon see, an important co-operant condition of

mnemonic illusion, but does not constitute it, any more than haziness of

vision or disease of the visual organ, though highly favourable to

optical illusion, can be said to constitute it.

We may conveniently proceed in our detailed examination of illusions of

memory, by distinguishing between three facts which appear to be

involved in every complete and accurate process of recollection. When I

distinctly recall an event, I am immediately sure of three things: (1)

that something did really happen to me; (2) that it happened in the way

I now think; and (3) that it happened when it appears to have happened.

I cannot be said to recall a past event unless I feel sure on each of

these points. Thus, to be able to say that an event happened at a

particular date, and yet unable to describe how it happened, means that

I have a very incomplete recollection. The same is true when I can

recall an event pretty distinctly, but fail to assign it its proper

date. This being so, it follows that there are three possible openings,

and only three, by which errors of memory may creep in. And, as a matter

of fact, each of these openings will be found to let in one class of

mnemonic illusion. Thus we have (1) false recollections, to which there

correspond no real events of personal history; (2) others which

misrepresent the manner of happening of the events; and (3) others which

falsify the date of the events remembered.

It is obvious, from a mere glance at this threefold classification, that

illusions of memory closely correspond to visual illusions. Thus, class

(1) may be likened to the optical illusions known as subjective

sensations of light, or ocular spectra. Here we can prove that there is

nothing actually seen in the field of vision, and that the semblance of

a visible object arises from quite another source than that of ordinary

external light-stimulation, and by what may be called an accident.

Similarly, in the case of the first class of mnemonic illusions, we

shall find that there is nothing actually recollected, but that the

mnemonic spectra or phantoms of recollected objects can be accounted for

in quite another way. Such illusions come nearest to hallucinations in

the region of memory.

Again, class (2) has its visual analogue in those optical illusions

which depend on effects of haziness and of the action of refracting

media interposed between the eye and the object; in which cases, though

there is some real thing corresponding to the perception, this is seen

in a highly defective, distorted, and misleading form. In like manner,

we can say that the images of memory often get obscured, distorted, and

otherwise altered when they have receded into the dim distance, and are

looked back upon through a long space of intervening mental experience.

Finally, class (3) has its visual counterpart in erroneous perceptions

of distance, as when, for example, owing to the clearness of the

mountain atmosphere and the absence of intervening objects, the side of

the Jungfrau looks to the inexperienced tourist at Wengernalp hardly

further than a stone's throw. It will be found that when our memory

falsifies the date of an event, the error arises much in the same way as

a visual miscalculation of distance.

This threefold division of illusions of memory is plainly a rather

superficial one, and not based on distinctions of psychological nature

or origin. In order to make our treatment of the subject scientific as

well as popular, it will be necessary to introduce the distinction

between the passive and the active factor under each head. It will be

found, I think, without forcing the analogy too far, that here, as in

the case of the illusions of perception and introspection, error is

attributable now to misleading suggestion on the part of the mental

content of the moment, now to a process of incorporating into this

content a mental image not suggested by it, but existing independently.

If we are to proceed as we did in the case of the illusions of sense,

and take up the lower stages of error first of all, we shall need to

begin with the third class of errors, those of localization in time, or

of what may be called mnemonic perspective. It has been already observed

that the definite localization of a mnemonic image is only an occasional

accompaniment of what is loosely called recollection. Hence, error as

to the position of an event in the past chain of events would seem to

involve the least degree of violation of the confidence which we are

wont to repose in memory. After this, we may proceed to the discussion

of the second class, which I may call distortions of the mnemonic

picture. And, finally, we may deal with the most signal and palpable

variety of error of memory, namely, the illusions which I have called

mnemonic spectra.

_Illusions of Perspective: A. Definite Localization._

In order to understand these errors of mnemonic perspective, we shall

have to inquire more closely than we have yet done into the

circumstances which customarily determine our idea of the degree of

propinquity or of remoteness of a past event. And first of all, we will

take the case of a complete act of recollection when the mind is able to

travel back along an uninterrupted series of experiences to a definitely

apprehended point. Here there would seem, at first sight, to be no room

for error, since this movement of retrospective imagination may be said

to involve a direct measurement of the distance, just as a sweep of the

eye over the ground between a spectator and an object affords a direct

measurement of the intervening space.

Modern science, however, tells us that this mode of measurement is by no

means the simple and accurate process which it at first seems to be. In

point of fact, there is something like a constant error in all such

retrospective measurement. Vierordt has proved experimentally, by making

a person try to reproduce the varying time-intervals between the

strokes of the pendulum of a metronome, that when the interval is a very

small one, we uniformly tend to exaggerate it in retrospection; when a

large one, to regard it, on the contrary, as less than it actually

was.[117]

A mere act of reflection will convince any one that when he tries to

conceive a very small interval, say a quarter of a second, he is likely

to make it too great. On the other hand, when we try to conceive a year,

we do not fully grasp the whole extent of the duration. This is proved

by the fact that merely by spending more time over the attempt, and so

recalling a larger number of the details of the period, we very

considerably enlarge our first estimate of the duration. And this leads

to great discrepancies in the appreciation of the relative magnitudes of

past sections of time. Thus, as Wundt observes, though in retrospect

both a month and a year seem too short, the latter is relatively much

more shortened than the former.[118]

The cause of this constant error in the mode of reproducing durations

seems to be connected with the very nature of the reproductive act. It

must be borne in mind that this act is itself, like the experience which

it represents, a mental process, occupying time, and that consequently

it may very possibly reflect its time-character on the resulting

judgment. Thus, since it certainly takes more than a quarter of a second

to pass in imagination from one impression to another, it may be that we

tend to confound this duration with that which we try to represent.

Similarly, the fact that in the act of reproductive imagination we

under-estimate a longer interval between two impressions, say those of

the slow beats of a colliery engine, may be accounted for by the

supposition that the imagination tends to pass from the one impression

to the succeeding one too rapidly.[119]

The gross misappreciation of duration of long periods of time, while it

may illustrate the principle just touched on, clearly involves the

effect of other and more powerful influences. A mere glance at what is

in our mind when we recall such a period as a month or a year, shows

that there is no clear concrete representation at all. Time, it has been

often said, is known only so far as filled with concrete contents or

conscious experiences, and a perfect imagination of any particular

period of past time would involve a retracing of all the successive

experiences which have gone to make up this section of our life. This, I

need not say, never happens, both because, on the one hand, memory does

not allow of a complete reproduction of any segment of our experience,

and because, on the other hand, such an imaginative reproduction, even

if possible, would clearly occupy as much time as the experience

itself.[120]

When I call up an image of the year just closing, what really happens is

a rapid movement of imagination over a series of prominent events, among

which the succession of seasons probably occupies the foremost place,

serving, as I have remarked, as a framework for my retrospective

picture. Each of the events which I thus run over is really a long

succession of shorter experiences, which, however, I do not separately

represent to myself. My imaginative reproduction of such a period is

thus essentially a greatly abbreviated and symbolic mode of

representation. It by no means corresponds to the visual imagination of

a large magnitude, say that of the length of sea horizon visible at any

one moment, which is complete in an instant, and quite independent of a

successive imagination of its parts or details. It is essentially a very

fragmentary and defective numerical idea, in which, moreover, the real

quantitative value of the units is altogether lost sight of.

Now, it seems to follow from this that there is something illusory in

all our recallings of long periods of the past. It is by no means

strictly correct to say that memory ever reinstates the past. It is more

true to say that we see the past in retrospect as greatly foreshortened.

Yet even this is hardly an accurate account of what takes place, since,

when we look at an object foreshortened in perspective, we see enough to

enable us imaginatively to reconstruct the actual size of the object,

whereas in the case of time-perspective no such reconstruction is even

indirectly possible.

It is to be added that this constant error in time-reproduction is

greater in the case of remote periods than of near ones of the same

length. Thus, the retrospective estimate of a duration far removed from

the present, say the length of time passed at a particular school, is

much more superficial and fragmentary than that of a recent

corresponding period. So that the time-vista of the past is seen to

answer pretty closely to a visible perspective in which the amount of

apparent error due to foreshortening increases with the distance.

In practice, however, this defect in the imagination of duration leads

to no error. Although, as a concrete image answering to some definite

succession of experiences a year is a gross misrepresentation, as a

general concept implying a collection of a certain number of similar

successions of experience it is sufficiently exact. That is to say,

though we cannot imagine the _absolute_ duration of any such cycle of

experience, we can, by the simple device of conceiving certain durations

as multiples of others, perfectly well compare different periods of

times, and so appreciate their _relative_ magnitudes.

Leaving, then, this constant error in time-appreciation, we will pass to

the variable and more palpable errors in the retrospective measurement

of time. Each person's experience will have told him that in estimating

the distance of a past event by a mere retrospective sense of duration,

he is liable to extraordinary fluctuations of judgment. Sometimes when

the clock strikes we are surprised at the rapidity of the hour. At other

times the timepiece seems rather to have lagged behind its usual pace.

And what is true of a short interval is still more true of longer

intervals, as months and years. The understanding of these fluctuations

will be promoted by our brief glance at the constant errors in

retrospective time-appreciation.

And here it is necessary to distinguish between the sense of duration

which we have during any period, and the retrospective sense which

survives the period, for these do not necessarily agree. The former

rests mainly on our prospective sense of time, whereas the latter must

be altogether retrospective.[121]

Our estimate of time as it passes is commonly said to depend on the

amount of consciousness which we are giving to the fact of its

transition. Thus, when the mind is unoccupied and suffering from

_ennui_, we feel time to move sluggishly. On the other hand, interesting

employment, by diverting the thoughts from time, makes it appear to move

at a more rapid pace. This fact is shown in the common expressions which

we employ, such as "to kill time," and the German _Langweile_.

Similarly, it is said that when we are eagerly anticipating an event, as

the arrival of a friend, the mere fact of dwelling on the interval makes

it appear to swell out.[122]

This view is correct in the main, and is seen, indeed, to follow from

the great psychological principle that what we attend to exists for us

more, has more reality, and so naturally seems greater than what we do

not attend to. At the same time, this principle must be supplemented by

another consideration. Suppose that I am very desirous that time should

not pass quickly. If, for example, I am enjoying myself or indulging in

idleness, and know that I have to be off to keep a not very agreeable

engagement in a quarter of an hour, time will seem to pass too rapidly;

and this not because my thoughts are diverted from the fact of its

transition, for, on the contrary, they are reverting to it more than

they usually do, but because my wish to lengthen the interval leads me

to represent the unwelcome moment as further off than it actually is, in

other words, to construct an ideal representation of the period in

contrast with which the real duration looks miserably short.

Our estimate of duration, when it is over, depends less on this

circumstance of having attended to its transition than on other

considerations. Wundt, indeed, seems to think that the feeling

accompanying the actual flow of time has no effect on the surviving

subjective appreciation; but this must surely be an error, since our

mental image of any period is determined by the character of its

contents. Wundt says that when once a tedious waiting is over, it looks

short because we instantly forget the feeling of tedium. My

self-observation, as well as the interrogation of others, has satisfied

me, on the contrary, that this feeling distinctly colours the

retrospective appreciation. Thus, when waiting at a railway station for

a belated train, I am distinctly aware that each quarter of an hour

looks long, not only as it passes, but when it is over. In fact, I am

disposed to express my feeling as one of disappointment that only so

short an interval has passed since I last looked at my watch.

Nevertheless, I am ready to allow that, though a feeling of tedium, or

the contrary feeling of irritation at the rapidity of time, will linger

for an appreciable interval and colour the retrospective estimate of

time, this backward view is chiefly determined by other considerations.

As Wundt remarks, we have no sense of time's slowness during sleep, yet

on waking we imagine that we have been dreaming for an immensely long

period. This retrospective appreciation is determined by the number and

the degree or intensity of the experiences, and, what comes very much to

the same thing, by the amount of unlikeness, freshness, and

discontinuity characterizing these experiences.

Time, as I have already hinted, is known under the form of a succession

of different conscious experiences. Unbroken uniformity would give us no

sense of time, because it would give us no conscious experience at all.

Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a perfectly uniform mental

state extending through an appreciable duration. In looking at one and

the same object, even in listening to one and the same tone, I am in no

two successive fractions of a second in exactly the same state of mind.

Slight alterations in the strength of the sensation,[123] in the degree

or direction of attention, and in the composition of that penumbra of

vague images which it calls up, occur at every distinguishable fraction

of time.

This being so, it would seem to follow that the greater the number of

clearly marked changes, and the more impressive and exciting these

transitions, the fuller will be our sense of time. And this is borne out

by individual reflection. When striking and deeply interesting events

follow one another very rapidly, as when we are travelling, duration

appears to swell out.

It is possible that such a succession of stirring experiences may beget

a vague consciousness of time at each successive moment, and apart from

retrospection, simply by force of the change. In other words, without

our distinctly attending to time, a series of novel impressions might,

by giving us the consciousness of change, make us dimly aware of the

numerical richness of our experiences. But, however this be, there is no

doubt that, in glancing back on such a succession of exciting

transitions of mental condition, time appears to expand enormously, just

as it does in looking back on our dream-experience, or that rapid series

of intensified feelings which, according to De Quincey and others, is

produced by certain narcotics.

The reason of this is plain. Such a type of successive experience offers

to the retrospective imagination a large number of distinguishable

points, and since this mode of estimating time depends, as we have seen,

on the extent of the process of filling in, time will necessarily appear

long in this case. On the other hand, when we have been engaged in very

ordinary pursuits, in which few deeply interesting or exciting events

have impressed themselves on memory, our retrospective picture will

necessarily be very much of a blank, and consequently the duration of

the period will seem to be short.

I observed that this retrospective appreciation of time depended on the

degree of connection between the successive experiences. This condition

is very much the same as the other just given, namely, the degree of

uniformity of the experiences, since the more closely the successive

stages of the experience are connected--as when, for example, we are

going through our daily routine of work--the more quiet and unexciting

will be the transition from each stage to its succeeding one. And on the

other hand, all novelty of impression and exciting transition of

experience clearly involves a want of connection. Wundt thinks the

retrospective estimate of a connected series of experiences, such as

those of our daily round of occupations, is defective just because the

effort of attention, which precedes even an imaginative reproduction of

an impression, so quickly accommodates itself in this case to each of

the successive steps, whereas, when the experiences to be recalled are

disconnected, the effort requires more time. In this way, the estimate

of a past duration would be coloured by the sense of time accompanying

the reproductive process itself. This may very likely be the case, yet I

should be disposed to attach most importance to the number of

distinguishable items of experience recalled.

Our representation of the position of a given event in the past is, as I

have tried to show, determined by the movement of imagination in going

back to it from the present. And this is the same thing as to say that

it depends on our retrospective sense of the intervening space. That is

to say, the sense of distance in time, as in space, is the recognition

of a term to a movement. And just as the distance of an object will seem

greater when there are many intervening objects affording points of

measurement, than when there are none (as on the uniform surface of the

sea), so the distance of an event will vary with the number of

recognized intervening points.

The appreciation of the distance of an event in time does not, however,

wholly depend on the character of this movement of imagination. Just as

the apparent distance of a visible object depends _inter alia_ on the

distinctness of the retinal impression, so the apparent temporal

remoteness of a past event depends in part on the degree of intensity

and clearness of the mnemonic image. This is seen even in the case of

those images which we are able distinctly to localize in the

time-perspective. For a series of exciting experiences intervening

between the present and a past event appears not only _directly_ to add

to our sense of distance by constituting an apparently long interval,

but _indirectly_ to add to it by giving an unusual degree of faintness

to the recalled image. An event preceding some unusually stirring series

of experiences gets thrust out of consciousness by the very engrossing

nature of the new experiences, and so tends to grow more faint and

ghost-like than it would otherwise have done.

The full force of this circumstance is best seen in the fact that a very

recent event, bringing with it a deep mental shock and a rapid stirring

of wide tracts of feeling and thought, may get to look old in a

marvellously short space of time. An announcement of the loss of a dear

friend, when sudden and deeply agitating, will seem remote even after an

hour of such intense emotional experience. And the same twofold

consideration probably explains the well-known fact that a year seems

much shorter to the adult than to the child. The novel and comparatively

exciting impressions of childhood tend to fill out time in retrospect,

and also to throw back remote events into a dimly discernible region.

Now, this same circumstance, the degree of vividness or of faintness of

the mnemonic image, is that which determines our idea of distance when

the character of the intervening experiences produces no appreciable

effect.[124] This is most strikingly illustrated in those imperfect

kinds of recollection in which we are unable to definitely localize the

mnemonic image. To the consideration of these we will now turn.

B. _Indefinite Localization._

Speaking roughly and generally, we may say that the vividness of an

image of memory decreases in proportion as the distance of the event

increases. And this is the rule which we unconsciously apply in

determining distance in time. Nevertheless, this rule gives us by no

means an infallible criterion of distance. The very fact that different

people so often dispute about the dates and the order of past events

experienced in common, shows pretty plainly that images of the same age

tend to arise in the mind with very unequal degrees of vividness.

Sometimes pictures of very remote incidents may suddenly present

themselves to our minds with a singular degree of brightness and force.

And when this is the case, there is a disposition to think of them as

near. If the relations of the event to other events preceding and

succeeding it are not remembered, this momentary illusion will persist.

We have all heard persons exclaim, "It seems only yesterday," under the

sense of nearness which accompanies a recollection of a remote event

when vividly excited. The most familiar instance of such lively

reproduction is the feeling which we experience on revisiting the scene

of some memorable event. At such a time the past may return with

something of the insistence of a present perceived reality. In passing

from place to place, in talking with others, and in reading, we are

liable to the sudden return by hidden paths of association of images of

incidents that had long seemed forgotten, and when they thus start up

fresh and vigorous, away from their proper surroundings, they invariably

induce a feeling of the propinquity of the events.

In many cases we cannot say why these particular images, long buried in

oblivion, should thus suddenly regain so much vitality. There seems,

indeed, to be almost as much that is arbitrary and capricious in the

selection by memory of its vivid images as in the selection of its

images as a whole; and, this being so, it is plain that we are greatly

exposed to the risk of illusion from this source.

There is an opposite effect in the case of recent occurrences that, for

some reason or another, have left but a faint impression on the memory;

though this fact is not, perhaps, so familiar as the other. I met a

friend, we will suppose, a few days since at my club, and we exchanged a

few words. My mind was somewhat preoccupied at the time, and the

occurrence did not stamp itself on my recollection. To-day I meet him

again, and he reminds me of a promise I made him at the time. His

reminder suffices to restore a dim image of the incident, but the fact

of its dimness leads to the illusion that it really happened much longer

ago, and it is only on my friend's strong assurances, and on reasoning

from other data that it must have occurred the day he mentions, that I

am able to dismiss the illusion.

The most striking examples of the illusory effect of mere vividness,

involving a complete detachment of the event from the prominent

landmarks of the past, are afforded by public events which lie outside

the narrower circle of our personal life, and which do not in the

natural course of things become linked to any definitely localized

points in the field of memory. These events may be very stirring and

engrossing for the time, but in many cases they pass out of the mind

just as suddenly as they entered it. We have no occasion to revert to

them, and if by chance we are afterwards reminded of them, they are

pretty certain to look too near, just because the fact of their having

greatly interested us has served to render their images particularly

vivid.

A curious instance of this illusory effect was supplied not long since

by the case of the ex-detectives, the expiration of whose term of

punishment (three years) served as an occasion for the newspapers to

recall the event of their trial and conviction. The news that three

years had elapsed since this well-remembered occurrence proved very

startling to myself, and to a number of my friends, all of us agreeing

that the event did not seem to be at more than a third of its real

distance. More than one newspaper commented on the apparent rapidity of

the time, and this shows pretty plainly that there was some cause at

work, such as I have suggested, producing a common illusion.

I have treated of these illusions connected with the estimate of past

time and the dating of past events as passive illusions, not involving

any active predisposition on the part of the imagination. At the same

time, it is possible that error in these matters may occasionally depend

on a present condition of the feelings and the imagination. It seems

plain that since the apparent degree of remoteness of an event not

distinctly localized in the past varies inversely as the degree of

vividness of the mnemonic image, any conscious concentration of mind on

a recollection will tend to bring it too near. In this way, then, an

illusory propinquity may be given to a recalled event through a mere

desire to dwell on it, or even a capricious wish to deceive one's self.

When, for example, old friends come together and talk over the days of

yore, there is a gradual reinstatement of seemingly lost experiences,

which often partakes of the character of a semi-voluntary process of

self-delusion. Through the cumulative effect of mutual reminder,

incident after incident returns, adding something to the whole picture

till it acquires a degree of completeness, coherence, and vividness that

render it hardly distinguishable from a very recent experience. The

process is like looking at a distant object through a field-glass.

Mistiness disappears, fresh details come into view, till we seem to

ourselves to be almost within reach of the object.

Where the mind habitually goes back to some painful circumstance under

the impulse of a morbid disposition to nurse regret, this momentary

illusion may become recurring, and amount to a partial confusion of the

near and the remote in our experience. An injury long brooded on seems

at length a thing that continually moves forward as we move; it always

presents itself to our memories as a very recent event. In states of

insanity brought on by some great shock, we see this morbid tendency to

resuscitate the dead past fully developed, and remote events and

circumstances becoming confused with present ones.

On the other hand, in more healthy states of mind there presents itself

an exactly opposite tendency, namely, an impulse of the will to banish

whatever when recalled gives pain to the furthest conceivable regions of

the past. Thus, when we have lost something we cherished dearly, and the

recollection of it brings fruitless longing, we instinctively seek to

expel the recollection from our minds. The very feeling that what has

been can never again be, seems to induce this idea of a vast remoteness

of the vanished reality. When, moreover, the lost object was fitted to

call forth the emotion of reverence, the impulse to magnify the

remoteness of the loss may not improbably be reinforced by the

circumstance that everything belonging to the distant past is fitted on

that account to excite a feeling akin to reverence. So, again, any

rupture in our mental development may lead us to exaggerate the distance

of some past portion of our experience. When we have broken with our

former selves, either in the way of worsening or bettering, we tend to

project these further into the past.

It is only when the sting of the recollection is removed, when, for

example, the calling up of the image of a lost friend is no longer

accompanied with the bitterness of futile longing, that a healthy mind

ventures to nourish recollections of such remote events and to view

these as part of its recent experiences. In this case the mnemonic image

becomes transformed into a kind of present emotional possession, an

element of that idealized and sublimated portion of our experience with

which all imaginative persons fill up the emptiness of their actual

lives, and to which the poet is wont to give an objective embodiment in

his verse.

_Distortions of Memory._

It is now time to pass to the second group of illusions of memory,

which, according to the analogy of visual errors, may be called

atmospheric illusions. Here the degree of error is greater than in the

case of illusions of time-perspective, since the very nature of the

events or circumstances is misconceived. We do not recall the event as

it happened, but see it in part only, and obscured, or bent and

distorted as by a process of refraction. Indeed, this transformation of

the past does closely correspond with the transformation of a visible

object effected by intervening media. Our minds are such refracting

media, and the past reappears to us not as it actually was when it was

close to us, but in numerous ways altered and disguised by the

intervening spaces of our conscious experience.

To begin with, what we call recollection is uniformly a process of

softening the reality. When we appear to ourselves to realize events of

the remote past, it is plain that our representation in a general way

falls below the reality: the vividness, the intensity of our impressions

disappears. More particularly, so far as our experiences are emotional,

they tend thus to become toned down by the mere lapse of time and the

imperfections of our reproductive power. That which we seem to see in

the act of recollection is thus very different from the reality.

Not only is there this general deficiency in mnemonic representation,

there are special deficiencies due to the fact of oblivescence. Our

memories restore us only fragments of our past life. And just as objects

seen imperfectly at a great distance may assume a shape quite unlike

their real one, so an inadequate representation of a past event by

memory often amounts to misrepresentation. When revisiting a place that

we have not seen for many years, we are apt to find that our

recollection of it consisted only of some insignificant details, which

arranged themselves in our minds into something oddly unlike the actual

scene. So, too, some accidental accompaniment of an incident in early

life is preserved, as though it were the main feature, serving to give

quite a false colouring to the whole occurrence.

It seems quite impossible to account for these particular survivals,

they appear to be so capricious. When a little time has elapsed after an

event, and the attendant circumstances fade away from memory, it is

often difficult to say why we were impressed with it as we afterwards

prove to have been. It is no doubt possible to see that many of the

recollections of our childhood owe their vividness to the fact of the

exceptional character of the events; but this cannot always be

recognized. Some of them seem to our mature minds very oddly selected,

although no doubt there are in every case good reasons, if we could only

discover them, why those particular incidents rather than any others

should have been retained.

The liability to error resulting from mere oblivescence and the

arbitrary selection of mental images is seen most plainly, perhaps, in

our subsequent representation and estimate of whole periods of early

life. Our idea of any stage of our past history, as early childhood, or

school days, is built up out of a few fragmentary intellectual relics

which cannot be certainly known to answer to the most important and

predominant experiences of the time. When, for example, we try to decide

whether our school days were our happiest days, as is so often alleged,

it is obvious that we are liable to fall into illusion through the

inadequacy of memory to preserve characteristic or typical features, and

none but these. We cannot easily recall the ordinary every-day level of

feeling of a distant period of life, but rather think of exceptional

moments of rejoicing or depression. The ordinary man's idea of the

emotional experience of his school days is probably built up out of a

few scrappy recollections of extraordinary and exciting events, such as

unexpected holidays, success in the winning of prizes, famous "rows"

with the masters, and so on.

Besides the impossibility of getting at the average and prevailing

mental tone of a distant section of life, there is a special difficulty

in determining the degree of happiness of the past, arising from the

fact that our memory for pleasures and for pains may not be equally

good. Most people, perhaps, can recall the enjoyments of the past much

more vividly than the sufferings. On the other hand, there seem to be

some who find the retention of the latter the easier of the two. This

fact should not be forgotten in reading the narrative of early hardships

which some recent autobiographies have given us.

Not only does our idea of the past become inexact by the mere decay and

disappearance of essential features, it becomes positively incorrect

through the gradual incorporation of elements that do not properly

belong to it. Sometimes it is easy to see how these extraneous ideas get

imported into our mental representation of a past event. Suppose, for

example, that a man has lost a valuable scarf-pin. His wife suggests

that a particular servant, whose reputation does not stand too high, has

stolen it. When he afterwards recalls the loss, the chances are that he

will confuse the fact with the conjecture attached to it, and say he

remembers that this particular servant did steal the pin. Thus, the past

activity of imagination serves to corrupt and partially falsify

recollections that have a genuine basis of fact.

It is evident that this class of mnemonic illusions approximates in

character to illusions of perception. When the imagination supplies the

interpretation at the very time, and the mind reads this into the

perceived object, the error is one of perception. When the addition is

made afterwards, on reflecting upon the perception, the error is one of

memory. The "fallacies of testimony" which depend on an adulteration of

pure observation with inference and conjecture, as, for example, the

inaccurate and wild statements of people respecting their experiences at

spiritualist _séances_, while they illustrate the curious blending of

both kinds of error, are probably much oftener illusions of memory than

of perception.[125]

Although in many cases we can account to ourselves for this confusion of

fact and imagination, in other cases it is difficult to see any close

relation between the fact remembered and the foreign element imported

into it. An idea of memory seems sometimes to lose its proper moorings,

so to speak; to drift about helplessly among other ideas, and finally,

by some chance, to hook itself on to one of these, as though it

naturally belonged to it. Anybody who has had an opportunity of

carefully testing the truthfulness of his recollection of some remote

event in early life will have found how oddly extraneous elements become

incorporated into the memorial picture. Incidents get put into wrong

places, the wrong persons are introduced into a scene, and so on. Here

again we may illustrate the mnemonic illusion by a visual one. When a

tree standing before or behind a house and projecting above or to the

side of it is not sharply distinguished from the latter, it may serve to

give it a very odd appearance.

These confusions of the mental image may arise even when only a short

interval has elapsed. In the case of many of the fleeting impressions

that are only half recollected, this kind of error is very easy. Thus,

for example, I may have lent a book to a friend last week. I really

remember the act of lending it, but have forgotten the person. But I am

not aware of this. The picture of memory has unknowingly to myself been

filled up by this unconscious process of shifting and rearrangement, and

the idea of another person has by some odd accident got substituted for

that of the real borrower. If we could go deeply enough into the matter,

we should, of course, be able to explain why this particular confusion

arose. We might find, for example, that the two persons were associated

in my mind by a link of resemblance, or that I had dealings with the

other person about the same time. Similarly, when we manage to join an

event to a wrong place, we may find that it is because we heard of the

occurrence when staying at the particular locality, or in some other way

had the image of the place closely associated in our minds with the

event. But often we are wholly unable to explain the displacement.

So far I have been speaking of the passive processes by which the past

comes to wear a new face to our imaginations. In these our present

habits of feeling and thinking take no part; all is the work of the

past, of the decay of memory, and the gradual confusion of images. This

process of disorganization may be likened to the action of damp on some

old manuscript, obliterating some parts, altering the appearance of

others, and even dislocating certain portions. Besides this passive

process of transformation, there is a more active one in which our

present minds co-operate. In memory, as in perception and introspection,

there is a process of preparation or preadjustment of mind, and here

will be found room for what I had called active error. This may be

illustrated by the operation of "interpreting" an old manuscript which

has got partially obliterated, or of "restoring" a faded picture; in

each of which operations error will be pretty sure to creep in through

an importation of the restorer's own ideas into the relic of the past.

Just as when distant objects are seen mistily our imaginations come into

play, leading us to fancy that we see something completely and

distinctly, so when the images of memory become dim, our present

imagination helps to restore them, putting a new patch into the old

garment. If only there is some relic of the past event preserved, a bare

suggestion of the way in which it may have happened will often suffice

to produce the conviction that it actually did happen in this way. The

suggestions that naturally arise in our minds at such times will bear

the stamp of our present modes of experience and habits of thought.

Hence, in trying to reconstruct the remote past, we are constantly in

danger of importing our present selves into our past selves.

The kind of illusion of memory which thus depends on the spontaneous or

independent activity of present imagination is strikingly illustrated in

the curious cases of mistaken identity with which the proceedings of

our law courts supply us from time to time. When a witness in good

faith, but erroneously, affirms that a man is the same as an old

acquaintance of his, we may feel sure that there is some striking point

or points of similarity between the two persons. But this of itself

would only partly account for the illusion, since we often see new faces

that, by a number of curious points of affinity, call up in a

tantalizing way old and familiar ones. What helps in this case to

produce the illusion is the preconception that the present man is the

witness's old friend. That is to say, his recollection is partly true,

though largely false. He does really recall the similar feature,

movement, or tone of voice; he only seems to himself to recall the rest

of his friend's appearance; for, to speak correctly, he projects the

present impression into the past, and constructs his friend's face out

of elements supplied by the new one. Owing to this cause, an illusion of

memory is apt to multiply itself, one man's assertion of what happened

producing by contagion a counterfeit of memory's record in other minds.

I said just now that we tend to project our present modes of experience

into the past. We paint our past in the hues of the present. Thus we

imagine that things which impressed us in some remote period of life

must answer to what is impressive in our present stage of mental

development. For example, a person recalls a hill near the home of his

childhood, and has the conviction that it was of great height. On

revisiting the place he finds that the eminence is quite insignificant.

How can we account for this? For one thing, it is to be observed that to

his undeveloped childish muscles the climbing to the top meant a

considerable expenditure of energy, to be followed by a sense of

fatigue. The man remembers these feelings, and "unconsciously reasoning"

by present experience, that is to say, by the amount of walking which

would now produce this sense of fatigue, imagines that the height was

vastly greater than it really was. Another reason is, of course, that a

wider knowledge of mountains has resulted in a great alteration of the

man's standard of height.

From this cause arises a tendency generally to exaggerate the

impressions of early life. Youth is the period of novel effects, when

all the world is fresh, and new and striking impressions crowd in

thickly on the mind. Consequently, it takes much less to produce a given

amount of mental excitation in childhood than in after-life. In looking

back on this part of our history, we recall for the most part just those

events and scenes which deeply stirred our minds by their strangeness,

novelty, etc., and so impressed themselves on the tablet of our memory;

and it is this sense of something out of the ordinary beat that gives

the characteristic colour to our recollection. In other words, we

remember something as wonderful, admirable, exceptionally delightful,

and so on, rather than as a definitely imagined event. This being so, we

unconsciously transform the past occurrence by reasoning from our

present standard of what is impressive. Who has not felt an unpleasant

disenchantment on revisiting some church, house, or park that seemed a

wondrous paradise to his young eyes? All our feelings are capable of

leading us into this kind of illusion. What seemed beautiful or awful

to us as children, is now pictured in imagination as corresponding to

what moves our mature minds to delight or awe. One cannot help wondering

what we should think of our early heroes or heroines if we could see

them again with our adult eyes exactly as they were.

While the past may thus take on an illusory hue through the very

progress of our experience and our emotional life, it may become further

transformed by a more conscious process, namely, the idealizing touch of

a present feeling. The way in which the emotions of love, reverence, and

so on, thus transform their lost objects is too well known to need

illustration. Speaking generally, we may say that in healthy minds the

play of these impulses of feeling results in a softening of the harsher

features of the past, and in an idealization of its happier and brighter

aspects. As Wordsworth says, we may assign to Memory a pencil--

"That, softening objects, sometimes even

Outstrips the heart's demand;

"That smoothes foregone distress, the lines

Of lingering care subdues,

Long-vanished happiness refines,

And clothes in brighter hues."[126]

Enough has now been said, perhaps, to show in how many ways our

retrospective imagination transforms the actual events of our past life.

So thoroughly, indeed, do the relics of this past get shaken together in

new kaleidoscopic combinations, so much of the result of later

experiences gets imported into our early years, that it may well be

asked whether, if the record of our actual life were ever read out to

us, we should be able to recognize it. It looks as though we could be

sure of recalling only recent events with any degree of accuracy and

completeness. As soon as they recede at any considerable distance from

us, they are subject to a sort of atmospheric effect. Much grows

indistinct and drops altogether out of sight, and what is still seen

often takes a new and grotesquely unlike shape. More than this, the play

of fancy, like the action of some refracting medium, bends and distorts

the outlines of memory's objects, making them wholly unlike the

originals.

_Hallucinations of Memory._

We will now go on to the third class of mnemonic error, which I have

called the spectra of memory, where there is not simply a transformation

of the past event, but a complete imaginative creation of it. This class

of error corresponds, as I have observed, to an hallucination in the

region of sense-perception. And just as we distinguished between those

hallucinations of sense which arise first of all through some

peripherally caused subjective sensation, and those which want even this

element of reality and depend altogether on the activity of imagination,

so we may mark off two classes of mnemonic hallucination. The false

recollection may correspond to something past--and to this extent be a

recollection--though not to any objective fact, but only to a subjective

representation of such a fact, as, for example, a dream. In this case

the imitation of the mnemonic process may be very definite and complete.

Or the false recollection may be wholly a retrojection of a present

mental image, and so by no stretch of language be deserving of the name

recollection.

It is doubtful whether by any effort of will a person could bring

himself to regard a figment of his present imagination as representative

of a past reality. Definite and complete hallucinations of this sort do

not in normal circumstances arise. It seems necessary for a complete

illusion of memory that there should be something past and recovered at

the moment, though this may not be a real personal experience.[127] On

the other hand, it is possible, as we shall presently see, under certain

circumstances, to create out of present materials, and in a vague and

indefinite shape, pure phantoms of past experience, that is to say,

quasi-mnemonic images to which there correspond no past occurrences

whatever.

All recollection, as we have seen, takes place by means of a present

mental image which returns with a certain degree of vividness, and is

instantaneously identified with some past event. In many cases this

instinctive process of identification proves to be legitimate, for, as a

matter of fact, real impressions are the first and the commonest source

of such lively mnemonic images. But it is not always so. There are other

sources of our mental imagery which compete, so to speak, with the

region of real personal experience. And sometimes these leave behind

them a vivid image having all the appearance of a genuine mnemonic

image. When this is so, it is impossible by a mere introspective glance

to detect the falsity of the message from the past. We are in the same

position as the purchaser in a jet market, where a spurious commodity

has got inextricably mixed up with the genuine, and there is no ready

criterion by which he can distinguish the true from the false. Such a

person, if he purchases freely, is pretty sure to make a number of

mistakes. Similarly, all of us are liable to take counterfeit mnemonic

images for genuine ones; that is to say, to fall into an illusion of

"recollecting" what never really took place.

But what, it may be asked, are these false and illegitimate sources of

mnemonic images, these unauthorized mints which issue a spurious mental

coinage, and so confuse the genuine currency? They consist of two

regions of our internal mental life, which most closely resemble the

actual perception of real things in vividness and force, namely,

dream-consciousness and waking imagination. Each of these may introduce

into the mind vivid images which afterwards tend, under certain

circumstances, to assume the guise of recollections of actual events.

That our dream-experience may now and again lead us into illusory

recollection has already been hinted. And it is easy to understand why

this is so. When dreaming we have, as we have seen, a mental experience

which closely approximates in intensity and reality to that of waking

perception. Consequently, dreams may leave behind them, for a time,

vivid images which simulate the appearance of real images of memory.

Most of us, perhaps, have felt this after-effect of dreaming on our

waking thoughts. It is sometimes very hard to shake off the impression

left by a vivid dream, as, for example, that a dead friend has returned

to life. During the day that follows the dream, we have at intermittent

moments something like an assurance that we have seen our lost friend;

and though we immediately correct the impression by reflecting that we

are recalling but a dream, it tends to revive within us with a strange

pertinacity.

In addition to this proximate effect of a dream in disturbing the normal

process of recollection, there is reason to suppose that dreams may

exert a more remote effect on our memories. So widely different in its

form is our dreaming from our waking experience, that our dreams are

rarely recalled as wholes with perfect distinctness. They revive in us

only as disjointed fragments, and only for brief moments when some

accidental resemblance in the present happens to stir the latent trace

they have left on our minds. We get sudden flashes out of our

dream-world, and the process is too rapid, too incomplete for us to

identify the region whence the flashes come.

It is highly probable that our dreams are, to a large extent, answerable

for the sense of familiarity that we sometimes experience in visiting a

new locality or in seeing a new face. If, as we have found some of the

best authorities saying, we are, when asleep, always dreaming more or

less distinctly, and if, as we know, dreaming is a continual process of

transformation of our waking impressions in new combinations, it is not

surprising that our dreams should sometimes take the form of forecasts

of our waking life, and that consequently objects and scenes of this

life never before seen should now and again wear a familiar look.

That some instances of this puzzling sense of familiarity can be

explained in this way is proved. Thus, Paul Radestock, in the work

_Schlaf und Traum_, already quoted, tells us: "When I have been taking a

walk, with my thoughts quite unfettered, the idea has often occurred to

me that I had seen, heard, or thought of this or that thing once before,

without being able to recall when, where, and in what circumstances.

This happened at the time when, with a view to the publication of the

present work, I was in the habit of keeping an exact record of my

dreams. Consequently, I was able to turn to this after these

impressions, and on doing so I generally found the conjecture confirmed

that I had previously dreamt something like it." Scientific inquiry is

often said to destroy all beautiful thoughts about nature and life; but

while it destroys it creates. Is it not almost a romantic idea that just

as our waking life images itself in our dreams, so our dream-life may

send back some of its shadowy phantoms into our prosaic every-day world,

touching this with something of its own weird beauty?

Not only may dreams beget these momentary illusions of memory, they may

give rise to something like permanent illusions. If a dream serves to

connect a certain idea with a place or person, and subsequent experience

does not tend to correct this, we may keep the belief that we have

actually witnessed the event. And we may naturally expect that this

result will occur most frequently in the case of those who habitually

dream vividly, as young children.

It seems to me that many of the quaint fancies which children get into

their heads about things they hear of arise in this way. I know a person

who, when a child, got the notion that when his baby-brother was weaned,

he was taken up on a grassy hill and tossed about. He had a vivid idea

of having seen this curious ceremony. He has in vain tried to get an

explanation of this picturesque rendering of an incident of babyhood

from his friends, and has come to the conclusion that it was the result

of a dream. If, as seems probable, children's dreams thus give rise to

subsequent illusions of memory, the fact would throw a curious light on

some of the startling quasi-records of childish experience to be met

with in autobiographical literature.

Odd though it may at first appear, old age is said to resemble youth in

this confusion of dream-recollection with the memory of waking

experience. Dr. Carpenter[128] tells us of "a lady of advanced age

who ... continually dreams about passing events, and seems entirely unable

to distinguish between her dreaming and her waking experiences,

narrating the former with implicit belief in them, and giving directions

based on them." This confusion in the case of the old may possibly

arise not from an increase in the intensity of the dreams, but from a

decrease in the intensity of the waking impressions. As Sir Henry

Holland remarks,[129] in old age life approaches to the state of a

dream.

The other source of what may, by analogy with the hallucinations of

sense, be called the peripherally originating spectra of memory is

waking imagination. In certain morbid conditions of mind, and in the

case of the few healthy minds endowed with special imaginative force,

the products of this mental activity, may, as we saw when dealing with

illusions of perception, closely resemble dreams in their vividness and

apparent actuality. When this is the case, illusions of memory may arise

at once just as in the case of dreams. This will happen more easily when

the imagination has for some time been occupied with the same group of

ideal scenes, persons, or events. To Dickens, as is well known, his

fictitious characters were for the time realities, and after he had

finished his story their forms and their doings lingered with him,

assuming the aspect of personal recollections. So, too, the energetic

activity of imagination which accompanies a deep and absorbing sympathy

with another's painful experiences, may easily result in so vivid a

realization of all their details as to leave an after-sense of

_personal_ suffering. All highly sympathetic persons who have closely

accompanied beloved friends through a great sorrow have known something

of this subsequent feeling.

The close connection and continuity between normal and abnormal states

of mind is illustrated in the fact that in insanity the illusion of

taking past imaginations for past realities becomes far more powerful

and persistent. Abercrombie (_Intellectual Powers_, Part III. sec. iv. §

2, "Insanity") speaks of "visions of the imagination which have formerly

been indulged in of that kind which we call waking dreams or

castle-building recurring to the mind in this condition, and now

believed to have a real existence." Thus, for example, one patient

believed in the reality of the good luck previously predicted by a

fortune-teller. Other writers on mental disease observe that it is a

common thing for the monomaniac to cherish the delusion that he has

actually gained the object of some previous ambition, or is undergoing

some previously dreaded calamity.

Nor is it necessary to these illusions of memory that there should be

any exceptional force of imagination. A fairly vivid representation to

ourselves of anything, whether real or fictitious, communicated by

others, will often result in something very like a personal

recollection. In the case of works of history and fiction, which adopt

the narrative tense, this tendency to a subsequent illusion of memory is

strengthened by the disposition of the mind at the moment of reading to

project itself backwards as in an act of recollection. This is a point

which will be further dealt with in the next chapter.

In most cases, however, illusions of memory growing out of previous

activities of the imagination appear only after the lapse of some time,

when in the natural course of things the mental images derived from

actual experience would sink to a certain degree of faintness. Habitual

novel-readers often catch themselves mistaking the echo of some passage

in a good story for the trace left by an actual event. A person's name,

a striking saying, and even an event itself, when we first come across

it or experience it, may for a moment seem familiar to us, and to recall

some past like impression, if it only happens to resemble something in

the works of a favourite novelist. And so, too, any recital of another's

experience, whether oral or literary, if it deeply interests us and

awakens a specially vivid imagination of the events described, may

easily become the starting-point of an illusory recollection.

Children are in the habit of "drinking in" with their vigorous and eager

imaginations what is told them and read to them, and hence they are

specially likely to fall into this kind of error. Not only so: when they

grow up and their early recollections lose their definiteness, becoming

a few fragments saved from a lost past, it must pretty certainly happen

that if any ideas derived from these recitals are preserved, they will

simulate the form of memories. Thus, I have often caught myself for a

moment under the sway of the illusion that I actually visited the

Exhibition of 1851, the reason being that I am able to recall the

descriptions given to me of it by my friends, and the excitement

attending their journey to London on the occasion. It is to be added

that repetition of the act of imagination will tend still further to

deepen the subsequent feeling that we are recollecting something. As

Hartley well observes, a man, by repeating a story, easily comes to

suppose that he remembers it.[130]

Here, then, we have another source of error that we must take into

account in judging of the authenticity of an autobiographical narration

of the events of childhood. The more imaginative the writer, the greater

the risk of illusion from this source as well as from that of

dream-fancies. It is highly probable, indeed, that in such full and

explicit records of very early life as those given by Rousseau, by

Goethe, or by De Quincey, some part of the quasi-narrative is based on

mental images which come floating down the stream of time, not from the

substantial world of the writer's personal experience, but from the airy

region of dream-land or of waking fancy.

It is to be added that even when the quasi-recollection does answer to a

real event of childish history, it may still be an illusion. The fact

that others, in narrating events to us, are able to awaken imaginations

that afterwards appear as past realities, suggests that much of our

supposed early recollection owes its existence to what our parents and

friends have from time to time told us respecting the first stages of

our history.[131] We see, then, how much uncertainty attaches to all

autobiographical description of very early life.

Modern science suggests another possible source of these distinct

spectra of memory. May it not happen that, by the law of hereditary

transmission, which is now being applied to mental as well as bodily

phenomena, ancestral experiences will now and then reflect themselves

in our mental life, and so give rise to apparently personal

recollections? No one can say that this is not so. When the infant first

steadies his eyes on a human face, it may, for aught we know, experience

a feeling akin to that described above, when through a survival of

dream-fancy we take some new scene to be already familiar. At the age

when new emotions rapidly develop themselves, when our hearts are full

of wild romantic aspirations, do there not seem to blend with the eager

passion of the time deep resonances of a vast and mysterious past, and

may not this feeling be a sort of reminiscence of prenatal, that is,

ancestral experience?

This idea is certainly a fascinating one, worthy to be a new scientific

support for the beautiful thought of Plato and of Wordsworth. But in our

present state of knowledge, any reasoning on this supposition would

probably appear too fanciful. Some day we may find out how much

ancestral experience is capable of bequeathing in this way, whether

simply shadowy, undefinable mental tendencies, or something like

definite concrete ideas. If, for example, it were found that a child

that was descended from a line of seafaring ancestors, and that had

never itself seen or heard of the "dark-gleaming sea," manifested a

feeling of recognition when first beholding it, we might be pretty sure

that such a thing as recollection of prenatal events does take place.

But till we have such facts, it seems better to refer the "shadowy

recollections" to sources which fall within the individual's own

experience.

We may now pass to those hallucinations of memory which are analogous to

the _centrally_ excited hallucinations of sense-perception. As I have

observed, these are necessarily vague and imperfectly developed.

I have already had occasion to touch on the fact of the vast amount of

our forgotten experience. And I observed that forgetfulness was a common

negative condition of mnemonic illusion. I have now to complete this

statement by the observation that total forgetfulness of any period or

stage of our past experience necessarily tends to a vague kind of

hallucination. In looking back on the past, we see no absolute gaps in

the continuity of our conscious life; our image of this past is

essentially one of an unbroken series of conscious experiences. But if

through forgetfulness a part of the series is effaced from memory, how,

it may be asked, is it possible to construct this perfectly continuous

line? The answer is that we fill up such lacunæ vaguely by help of some

very imperfectly imagined common type of conscious experience. Just as

the eye sees no gap in its field of vision corresponding to the "blind

spot" of the retina, but carries its impression over this area, so

memory sees no lacuna in the past, but carries its image of conscious

life over each of the forgotten spaces.

Sometimes this process of filling in gaps in the past becomes more

complete. Thus, for example, in recalling a particular night a week or

so ago, I instinctively represent it to myself as so many hours of lying

in bed with the waking sensations appropriate to the circumstances, as

those of bodily warmth and rest, and of the surrounding silence and

darkness.

It is apparent that I cannot conceive myself apart from some mode of

conscious experience. In thinking of myself in any part of the past or

future in which there is actually no consciousness, or of which the

conscious content is quite unknown to me, I necessarily imagine myself

as consciously experiencing something. If I picture myself under any

definitely conceived circumstances, I irresistibly import into my mental

image the feelings appropriate to these surroundings. In this way,

people tend to imagine themselves after death as lying in the grave,

feeling its darkness and its chilliness. If the circumstances of the

time are not distinctly represented, the conception of the conscious

experience which constitutes that piece of the ego is necessarily vague,

and seems generally to resolve itself into a representation of ourselves

as dimly _self-conscious_. What this consciousness of self consists of

is a point that will be taken up presently.

_Illusions with respect to Personal Identity._

It would seem to follow from these errors in imaginatively filling up

our past life, that our consciousness of personal identity is by no

means the simple and exact process which it is commonly supposed to be.

I have already remarked that the very fact of there being so large a

region of the irrevocable in our past experience proves our

consciousness of personal continuity to be largely a matter of

inference, or of imaginative conjecture, and not simply of immediate

recollection. Indeed, it may be said that our power of ignoring whole

regions of the past and of leaping complacently over huge gaps in our

memory and linking on conscious experience with conscious experience,

involves an illusory sense of continuity, and so far of personal

identity. Thus, our ordinary image of our past life, if only by omitting

the very large fraction passed in sleep, in at least an approximately

unconscious state, clearly contains an ingredient of illusion.[132]

It is to be added that the numerous falsifications of our past history,

which our retrospective imagination is capable of perpetrating, make our

representation of ourselves at different moments and in different stages

of our past history to a considerable extent illusory. Thus, though to

mistake a past dream-experience for a waking one may not be to lose or

confuse the sense of identity, since our dreams are, after all, a part

of our experience, yet to imagine that we have ourselves seen what we

have only heard from another or read is clearly to confuse the

boundaries of our identity. And with respect to longer sections of our

history, it is plain that when we wrongly assimilate our remote to our

present self, and clothe our childish nature with the feelings and the

ideas of our adult life, we identify ourselves overmuch. In this way,

through the corruption of our memory, a kind of sham self gets mixed up

with the real self, so that we cannot, strictly speaking, be sure that

when we project a mnemonic image into the remote past we are not really

running away from our true personality.

So far I have been touching only on slight errors in the recognition of

that identical self which is represented as persisting through all the

fluctuations of conscious life. Other and grosser illusions connected

with personal identity are also found to be closely related to defects

or disturbances of the ordinary mnemonic process, and so can be best

treated here. In order to understand these, we must inquire a little

into the nature of our idea and consciousness of a persistent self.

Here, again, I would remind the reader that I am treating the point only

so far as it can be treated scientifically or empirically, that is to

say, by examining what concrete facts or data of experience are taken up

into the idea of self. I do not wish to foreclose the philosophic

question whether anything more than this empirical content is involved

in the conception.

My idea of myself as persisting appears to be built up of certain

similarities in the succession of my experiences. Thus, my permanent

self consists, on the bodily side, of a continually renewable perception

of my own organism, which perception is mainly visual and tactual, and

which remains pretty constant within certain limits of time. With this

objective similarity is closely conjoined a subjective similarity. Thus,

the same sensibilities continue to characterize the various parts of my

organism. Similarly, there are the higher intellectual, emotional, and

moral peculiarities and dispositions. My idea of my persistent self is

essentially a collective image representing a relatively unchanging

material object, endowed with unchanging sensibilities and forming a

kind of support for permanent higher mental attributes.

The construction of this idea of an enduring unchanging ego is rendered

very much easier by the fact that certain concrete feelings are

approximately constant elements in our mental life. Among these must be

ranked first that dimly discriminated mass of organic sensation which in

average states of health is fairly constant, and which stands in sharp

contrast to the fluctuating external sensations. These feelings enter

into and profoundly colour each person's mental image of himself. In

addition to this, there are the frequently recurring higher feelings,

the dominant passions and ideas which approximate more or less closely

to constant factors of our conscious experience.

This total image of the ego becomes defined and rendered precise by a

number of distinctions, as that between my own body or that particular

material object with which are intimately united all my feelings, and

other material objects in general; then between my organism and other

human organisms, with which I learn to connect certain feelings

answering to my own, but only faintly represented instead of actually

realized feelings. To these prime distinctions are added others, hardly

less fundamental, as those between my individual bodily appearance and

that of other living bodies, between my personal and characteristic

modes of feeling and thinking and those of others, and so on.

Our sense of personal identity may be said to be rooted in that special

side of the mnemonic process which consists in the linking of all

sequent events together by means of a thread of common consciousness. It

is closely connected with that smooth, gliding movement of imagination

which appears to involve some more or less distinct consciousness of the

uniting thread of similarity. And so long as this movement is possible,

so long, that is to say, as retrospective imagination detects the common

element, which we may specifically call the recurring consciousness of

self, so long is there the undisturbed assurance of personal identity.

Nay, more, even when such a recognition might seem to be difficult, if

not impossible, as in linking together the very unlike selves, viewed

both on their objective and subjective sides, of childhood, youth, and

mature life, the mind manages, as we have seen, to feign to itself a

sufficient amount of such similarity.

But this process of linking stage to stage, of discerning the common or

the recurring amid the changing and the evanescent, has its limits.

Every great and sudden change in our experience tends, momentarily at

least, to hinder the smooth reflux of imagination. It makes too sharp a

break in our conscious life, so that imagination is incapable of

spanning the gap and realizing the then and the now as parts of a

connected continuous tissue.[133]

These changes may be either objective or subjective. Any sudden

alteration of our bodily appearance sensibly impedes the movement of

imagination. A patient after a fever, when he first looks in the glass,

exclaims, "I don't know myself." More commonly the bodily changes which

affect the consciousness of an enduring self are such as involve

considerable alterations of coenæsthesis, or the mass of stable

organic sensation. Thus, the loss of a limb, by cutting off a portion of

the old sensations through which the organism may be said to be

immediately felt, and by introducing new and unfamiliar feelings, will

distinctly give a shock to our consciousness of self.

Purely subjective changes, too, or, to speak correctly, such as are

known subjectively only, will suffice to disturb the sense of personal

unity. Any great moral shock, involving something like a revolution in

our recurring emotional experience, seems at the moment to rupture the

bond of identity. And even some time after, as I have already remarked,

such cataclysms in our mental geology lead to the imaginative thrusting

of the old personality away from the new one under the form of a "dead

self."[134]

We see, then, that the failure of our ordinary assurance of personal

identity is due to the recognition of difference without similarity. It

arises from an act of memory--for the mind must still be able to recall

the past, dimly at least--but from a memory which misses its habitual

support in a recognized element of constancy. If there is no memory,

that is to say, if the past is a complete blank, the mind simply feels a

rupture of identity without any transformation of self. This is our

condition on awaking from a perfectly forgotten period of sleep, or from

a perfectly unconscious state (if such is possible) when induced by

anæsthetics. Such gaps are, as we have seen, easily filled up, and the

sense of identity restored by a kind of retrospective "skipping." On the

other hand, the confusion which arises from too great and violent a

transformation of our _remembered_ experiences is much less easily

corrected. As long as the recollection of the old feelings remains, and

with this the sense of violent contrast between the old and the new

ones, so long will the illusion of two sundered selves tend to recur.

The full development of this process of imaginative fission or cleavage

of self is to be met with in mental disease. The beginnings of such

disease, accompanied as they commonly are with disturbances of bodily

sensations and the recurring emotions, illustrate in a very interesting

way the dependence of the recognition of self on a certain degree of

uniformity in the contents of consciousness. The patient, when first

aware of these changes, is perplexed, and often regards the new feelings

as making up another self, a foreign _Tu_, as distinguished from the

familiar _Ego_. And sometimes he expresses the relation between the old

and the new self in fantastic ways, as when he imagines the former to be

under the power of some foreign personality.

When the change is complete, the patient is apt to think of his former

self as detached from his present, and of his previous life as a kind of

unreal dream; and this fading away of the past into shadowy unreal forms

has, as its result, a curious aberration in the sense of time. Thus, it

is said that a patient, after being in an asylum only one day, will

declare that he has been there a year, five years, and even ten

years.[135] This confusion as to self naturally becomes the

starting-point of illusions of perception; the transformation of self

seeming to require as its logical correlative (for there is a crude

logic even in mental disease) a transformation of the environment. When

the disease is fully developed under the particular form of monomania,

the recollection of the former normal self commonly disappears

altogether, or fades away into a dim image of some perfectly separate

personality. A new ego is now fully substituted for the old. In other

and more violent forms of disease (dementia) the power of connecting the

past and present may disappear altogether, and nothing but the _disjecta

membra_ of an ego remain.

* * * * *

Enough has, perhaps, been said to show how much of uncertainty and of

self-deception enters into the processes of memory. This much-esteemed

faculty, valuable and indispensable though it certainly is, can clearly

lay no claim to that absolute infallibility which is sometimes said to

belong to it. Our individual recollection, left to itself, is liable to

a number of illusions even with regard to fairly recent events, and in

the case of remote ones it may be said to err habitually and uniformly

in a greater or less degree. To speak plainly, we can never be certain

on the ground of our personal recollection alone that a distant event

happened exactly in the way and at the time that we suppose. Nor does

there seem to be any simple way by mere reflection on the contents of

our memory of distinguishing what kinds of recollection are likely to be

illusory.

How, then, it may be asked, can we ever be certain that we are

faithfully recalling the actual events of the past? Given a fairly good,

that is, a cultivated memory, it may be said that in the case of very

recent events a man may feel certain that, when the conditions of

careful attention at the time to what really happened were present, a

distinct recollection is substantially correct. Also it is obvious that

with respect to all repeated experiences our memories afford practically

safe guides. When memory becomes the basis of some item of generalized

knowledge, as, for example, of the truth that the pain of indigestion

has followed a too copious indulgence in rich food, there is little room

for an error of memory properly so called. On the other hand, when an

event is not repeated in our experience, but forms a unique link in our

personal history, the chances of error increase with the distance of the

event; and here the best of us will do well to have resort to a process

of verification or, if necessary, of correction.

In order thus to verify the utterances of memory, we must look beyond

our own internal mental states to some external facts. Thus, the

recollections of our early life may often be tested by letters written

by ourselves or our friends at the time, by diaries, and so on. When

there is no unerring objective record to be found, we may have recourse

to the less satisfactory method of comparing our recollections with

those of others. By so doing we may reach a rough average recollection

which shall at least be free from any individual error corresponding to

that of personal equation in perception. But even thus we cannot be sure

of eliminating all error, since there may be a cause of illusion acting

on all our minds alike, as, for example, the extraordinary nature of the

occurrence, which would pretty certainly lead to a common exaggeration

of its magnitude, etc., and since, moreover, this process of comparing

recollections affords an opportunity for that reading back a present

preconception into the past to which reference has already been made.

The result of our inquiry is less alarming than it looks at first sight.

Knowledge is valuable for action, and error is chiefly hurtful in so far

as it misdirects conduct. Now, in a general way, we do not need to act

upon a recollection of single remote events; our conduct is sufficiently

shaped by an accurate recollection of single recent events, together

with those bundles of recollections of recurring events and sequences of

events which constitute our knowledge of ourselves and our common

knowledge of the world about us. Nature has done commendably well in

endowing us with the means of cultivating our memories up to this point,

and we ought not to blame her for not giving us powers which would only

very rarely prove of any appreciable practical service to us.

NOTE.

MOMENTARY ILLUSIONS OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.

The account of the apparent ruptures in our personal identity given in

this chapter may help us to understand the strange tendency to confuse

self with other objects which occasionally appears in waking

consciousness and in dreams. These errors may be said generally to be

due to the breaking up of the composite image of self into its

fragments, and the regarding of certain of these only. Thus, the

momentary occurrence of partial illusion in intense sympathy with

others, including that imaginative projection of self into inanimate

objects, to which reference has already been made, may be said to depend

on exclusive attention to the subjective aspect of self, to the total

disregard of the objective aspect. In other words, when we thus

momentarily "lose ourselves," or merge our own existence in that of

another object, we clearly let drop out of sight the visual

representation of our own individual organism. On the other hand, when

in dreams we double our personality, or represent to ourselves an

external self which becomes the object of visual perception, it is

probably because we isolate in imagination the objective aspect of our

personality from the other and subjective aspect. It is not at all

unlikely that the several confusions of self touched on in this chapter

have had something to do with the genesis of the various historical

theories of a transformed existence, as, for example, the celebrated

doctrine of metempsychosis.