with the fact that the
memory-image can be explained by habit. As regards the memory-belief,
we must, at least provisionally, accept Bergson's view that it cannot be
brought under the head of habit, at any rate when it first occurs, i.e.
when we remember something we never remembered before.

We must now consider somewhat more closely the content of a
memory-belief. The memory-belief confers upon the memory-image something
which we may call "meaning;" it makes us feel that the image points to
an object which existed in the past. In order to deal with this topic
we must consider the verbal expression of the memory-belief. We might
be tempted to put the memory-belief into the words: "Something like
this image occurred." But such words would be very far from an accurate
translation of the simplest kind of memory-belief. "Something like this
image" is a very complicated conception. In the simplest kind of memory
we are not aware of the difference between an image and the sensation
which it copies, which may be called its "prototype." When the image
is before us, we judge rather "this occurred." The image is not
distinguished from the object which existed in the past: the word "this"
covers both, and enables us to have a memory-belief which does not
introduce the complicated notion "something like this."

It might be objected that, if we judge "this occurred" when in fact
"this" is a present image, we judge falsely, and the memory-belief,
so interpreted, becomes deceptive. This, however, would be a mistake,
produced by attempting to give to words a precision which they do not
possess when used by unsophisticated people. It is true that the image
is not absolutely identical with its prototype, and if the word "this"
meant the image to the exclusion of everything else, the judgment "this
occurred" would be false. But identity is a precise conception, and no
word, in ordinary speech, stands for anything precise. Ordinary speech
does not distinguish between identity and close similarity. A word
always applies, not only to one particular, but to a group of associated
particulars, which are not recognized as multiple in common thought or
speech. Thus primitive memory, when it judges that "this occurred," is
vague, but not false.

Vague identity, which is really close similarity, has been a source
of many of the confusions by which philosophy has lived. Of a vague
subject, such as a "this," which is both an image and its prototyp