pe. One friend, who does a prodigious quantity of
work, has in fact confessed to me that, if he wants to get ideas on any
subject, he sits down to work at something else, his best results coming
through his mind-wanderings. This is perhaps an epigrammatic
exaggeration on his part; but I seriously think that no one of us need
be too much distressed at his own shortcomings in this regard. Our mind
may enjoy but little comfort, may be restless and feel confused; but it
may be extremely efficient all the same.

XII. MEMORY

We are following a somewhat arbitrary order. Since each and every
faculty we possess is either in whole or in part a resultant of the play
of our associations, it would have been as natural, after treating of
association, to treat of memory as to treat of interest and attention
next. But, since we did take the latter operations first, we must take
memory now without farther delay; for the phenomena of memory are among
the simplest and most immediate consequences of the fact that our mind
is essentially an associating machine. There is no more pre-eminent
example for exhibiting the fertility of the laws of association as
principles of psychological analysis. Memory, moreover, is so important
a faculty in the schoolroom that you are probably waiting with some
eagerness to know what psychology has to say about it for your help.

In old times, if you asked a person to explain why he came to be
remembering at that moment some particular incident in his previous
life, the only reply he could make was that his soul is endowed with a
faculty called memory; that it is the inalienable function of this
faculty to recollect; and that, therefore, he necessarily at that moment
must have a cognition of that portion of the past. This explanation by a
'faculty' is one thing which explanation by association has superseded
altogether. If, by saying we have a faculty of memory, you mean nothing
more than the fact that we can remember, nothing more than an abstract
name for our power inwardly to recall the past, there is no harm done:
we do have the faculty; for we unquestionably have such a power. But if,
by faculty, you mean a principle of _explanation of our general power to
recall_, your psychology is empty. The associationist psychology, on the
other hand, gives an explanation of each particular fact of
recollection; and, in so doing, it also gives an explanation of the
general faculty. The 'faculty' of memory