Ingot

“ Thus I extend my conscious memory by invoking my larger unconscious memory.
I shall report some striking examples of forgetting which for the most part I have observed in myself. I distinguish forgetting of impressions and experiences, that is, the forgetting of knowledge, from forgetting of resolutions, that is, the forgetting of omissions. The uniform result of the entire series of observations I can formulate as follows: The forgetting in all cases is proved to be founded on a motive of displeasure. ”

“ She moved to the door, and he followed at her elbow, casting about for a magic word that would make the enigma clear, that would compel the surrender of the gift. And there is no such word! The enigma is only made clear by sacrifice, and the gift of heaven is in the hands of every man. But they had lived in a world that abhors enigmas, and cares for no gifts but such as can be obtained in the street. ”

“ But when it was present, how did it write its image on the memory, since forgetfulness, by its presence, blots out even what it finds already written there? And yet in some way or other, even though it is incomprehensible and inexplicable, I am still quite certain that I also remember forgetfulness, by which we remember that something is blotted out.
Chapter XVII 26. Great is the power of memory. It is a true marvel, O my God, a profound and infinite multiplicity! And this is the mind, and this I myself am. What, then, am I, O my God? Of what nature am I? ”

“ Nor I think has any one, who has known that experience with any constancy, failed to find some day in some old book or on some old monument, a strange or intricate image, that had floated up before him, and grow perhaps dizzy with the sudden conviction that our little memories are but a part of some great memory that renews the world and men's thoughts age after age, and that our thoughts are not, as we suppose, the deep but a little foam upon the deep. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the point we would request of you is, that you will promise to forget this fellow—to illiterate him, I say, from your memory.
Lyd. Ah, madam! our memories are independent of our wills. It is not so easy to forget.
Mrs. M. But I say it is, miss! There is nothing on earth so easy as to forget, if a person chooses to set about it. I'm sure I have as much forgot your poor, dear uncle as if he had never existed, and I thought it my duty to do so; and let me tell you, Lydia, these violent memories don't become a young woman. ”

“ And but for our surface and distracted lives,—lived here for the most part in the senses,—we should have never lost the consciousness of our descent into mortality, nor have questioned our resurrection and longevity. But as in descending, all drink of oblivion—some more, some less—it happens that while all are conscious of life, by defect of memory, our recollections are various concerning it; those discerning most vividly who have drank least of oblivion, they more easily recalling the memory of their past existence. ”

“ She had forgotten that night until lately—forgotten her tears, her doubts, her hesitation; but, as at the day of judgment the scroll of our lives will be unfolded before us, so even in this world there are times when part of the history is remembered by us, when the thoughts and the resolutions of the long ago, appear before us like unwelcome ghosts. ”

“ There is more than the germ of truth in things erroneous in the child’s definition of memory as the thing one forgets with. To be able to forget means sanity. Incessantly to remember, means obsession, lunacy. So the problem I faced in solitary, where incessant remembering strove for possession of me, was the problem of forgetting. When I gamed with flies, or played chess with myself, or talked with my knuckles, I partially forgot. ”

“ Such Œdipus was I to be—not divining a word's juggle, but whose agonizing pangs, and sorrow-tainted life were to be the engines, wherewith to lay bare the secrets of destiny, and reveal the meaning of the enigma, whose explanation closed the history of the human race. ”

“ So that I prefer to make no chronicle for that gap of time, to tell only one cardinal incident of the ten months I spent as an intimate of these half-humanised brutes. There is much that sticks in my memory that I could write,—things that I would cheerfully give my right hand to forget; but they do not help the telling of the story.
In the retrospect it is strange to remember how soon I fell in with these monsters’ ways, and gained my confidence again. ”

“ All is lost. God, is this enchantment? Or am I mad, and the inmate of some cell in an abode of lunacy, and all this about pies and letters merely the delusion of my overwrought fancy? Is there really a pie—a Mrs. Lovett—a Bell Yard—a letter—a—a—a—damn it, is there such a wretch as I myself, in this vast bustling world, or is all a wild and fathomless delusion? ”

“ The woman who left a very real braid of hair in my hands, not long ago, to save herself from capture!"
"Yes. Yet, I am neither more nor less real than the One which came for you a while since."
"Then my nightmare was real? A thing of flesh and blood, or clever mechanism? You know it. Perhaps you produced it?"
The rush of my angry suspicion dashed in useless heat against her cool melancholy.
"Real? What is real?" she challenged me. [Pg 93] "Turn to the sciences that you should understand better than I, and ask. Stretch out your arm. For a million years men have vowed you touch empty air. ”

“ And so often does this happen that desire to solve the riddle becomes a pain,—that you finally find yourself making supplication to the Presence,—addressing to it questions which it will never answer directly, but only by a smile or by words having no relation to the asking,—words enigmatic, which make mysterious agitation in old forsaken fields of memory ... even as a wind betimes, over wide wastes of marsh, sets all the grasses whispering about nothing. ”

“ Turning over the pages of old case books, as one would idle with the sheets of an inventory, some of these long departed folk appear clearly enough, both as to their faces and the details of their histories; but the majority are mere ghosts with neither remembered names nor features, neither age nor sex. ”

“ I venture even to think that the recollection is one of unmixed pain only in those cases in which the sufferer has a half-consciousness that he has not escaped by legitimate means. If in his despair he has clutched at a lie in order to extricate himself as quickly as possible and at any price, it is no wonder that he looks back with a shudder. ”

“ If we specify the factors concerned in memory and say that it depends upon impression, retention, and recall, then what do we mean by 'forgetting'? If an event makes no impression upon the mind there is neither remembering nor forgetting; if there is retention of a memory, but one cannot recall it, it is nevertheless stored in the mind and may yet be revived by some association. So that the only certain factor in forgetting is the loss of power of recall, for what is apparently quite forgotten may still be retained in the unconscious. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I collected fourpence by the recital of "I remember, I remember." I knew it was fourpence, because they told me that if I kept it until I got twopence more I should have sixpence, which argument, albeit undeniable, moved me not, and the money was squandered, to the best of my recollection, on the very next morning, although upon what memory is a blank.
That is just the way with Memory; nothing that she brings to us is complete. She is a willful child; all her toys are broken. ”

“ Before the mind’s eye, whether in sleep or waking, came images that one was to discover presently in some book one had never read, and after looking in vain for explanation to the current theory of forgotten personal memory, I came to believe in a great memory passing on from generation to generation. ”

“ I have no doubt that many people who have not had the interesting experience of remembering one [Pg 140] or more of their former incarnations have been able through some trivial incident to recollect happenings long vanished from their memory. Sometimes the scent of a flower, the glimpse of a scene, a chance word or expression will vividly recall some episode lying hidden for many years in the subconsciousness. Again it will be pulled over the threshold from past to present, from the storehouse of the eternal memory into the everyday working consciousness or mind. ”

“ If we cannot remember, how can we discover these strange memories that are so powerful but so elusive? If they are below the level of consciousness, are they not, in the very nature of the case, forever hidden from view, in the sphere of the occult rather than that of science? ”

“ Thus we assume that forgetting is a spontaneous process to which we may ascribe a certain temporal discharge. We emphasize [Pg 136] the fact that, just as among the units of every impression or experience, in forgetting, too, a certain selection takes place among the existing impressions. We are acquainted with some of the conditions that underlie the tenaciousness of memory and the awakening of that which would otherwise remain forgotten. Nevertheless, we can observe in innumerable cases of daily life how unreliable and unsatisfactory our knowledge of the mechanism is. ”

“ Come into your own home when everyone is gone, when the lights are out and the furniture rearranged—there I will show you the strange and frightening ghosts that are the shapes left over when reality superimposes itself upon the images of memory. ”

“ Painfully, then, I got upon my feet and stole, with no sentiment but a weak curiosity, to the prostrate thing. It was as if I had died and my dissatisfied ghost postponed its departure, seeking the last explanation of things. Thus, while my soul was sensitive to the least expression of the tragedy that absorbed it, in the human world outside it seemed no longer to feel an interest. ”

“ Perhaps, again, the mention of them awoke echoes which had long been silent, and dragged forgotten facts out of oblivion to the light of day—just as one may enter a room which has been closely sealed for years, and see objects once familiar but long since absolutely forgotten, shrouded in dust and dim with disuse, but of which the sight instantly recalls every trifling association. ”

“ And we profess not to explain secret things sufficiently—far from it—but only to recall them to memory, whether we have forgot aught, or whether for the purpose of not forgetting. Many things, I well know, have escaped us, through length of time, that have dropped away unwritten. ”

“ A third view holds that, at least in the case of complex ideas, obliviscence consists in the crumbling into parts and the loss of separate components instead of in general obscuration. The idea of resolution into component parts recently spoken of supplies here the only explanation. “The image of a complex object is dim in our memory not because as a whole with all its parts present and in order it is illuminated by a feebler light of consciousness, but it is because it has become incomplete. ”

“ The figure remained, as I said, for some time by the fire, putting out first one hand, then the other, then each foot, alternately, as if warming itself; for your ghosts, if ghost it really was, are apt to be cold. My uncle furthermore remarked that it wore high-heeled shoes, after an ancient fashion, with paste or diamond buckles, that sparkled as though they were alive. At length the figure turned gently round, casting a glassy look about the apartment, which, as it passed over my uncle, made his blood run cold, and chilled the very marrow in his bones. ”

“ Where the transition from one state to another is complete, memory is entirely lost; but there are cases in which the change, being either gradual or modified, the recollections of one life are carried more or less into the other. ”

“ I can perhaps give the following outline concerning the mechanism of actual forgetting. The memory material succumbs in general to two influences, condensation and disfigurement. Disfigurement is the work of the tendencies dominating the psychic life, and directs itself above all against the affective remnants of memory traces which maintain a more resistive attitude towards condensation. The traces which have grown indifferent merge into a process of condensation without opposition ”

“ 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. ”