8/3/2019 A Theory of Remembering

1/3

A TheoryFrederic C.

IJ-.of RememberingBartlett

Yet, as a r.ule, the adaptive mechanissrs of thebody do not demand agy definite awareness, sofar as change of postureoritiffif ilot.ir.ntis concrrned. In every skilled bod4y:Sf&s*ng9"for example, a large number of movements arer.aade in succession, and every moveinent isfr.igd gqt as if thc position reached by theqg5ggj*bs in the last preceding stage weresomehow rccorded and still funaioning thoughthe panicular pleceding movement itself is pastand over. This obvious facthas given rise to many..sgrecrrlations concerning ttre way.s in which themovements which arepast nevertheless still retaintheir regulative nrnctiiii. o1-{.;; . ;Munk, the physi_o,l-ogi:t) furiting in 1890, said,that they did this because the brain must beregarded as a storgtguse, of images of movement,and he was unreflecti4gly followed by a great

| +ldJ+a4d. many other writeri, It iCTripposed that a preced-ing move.rnentproduces a csrtigal irnage, or tr.ace,which, being someholv re-excited at the momentof the next succeeding rrro!.ement, controls the

Jescr"Head showed definitely and finally that thiscannoq be the explanation- For images mavpersist perfectly u'hen all appreciation of relatir.e

. mo-vernent c3t5iS4g"ut in this unn'itting manneris totally lost. A patient'with a certain corticallesiqn .may be able td iri-a*?_iaccurately the posi-tion of his outsfietched arnr and hand on theco un terpan e-6f i*bel-. -iTe can equal ly i m a ge h is:iiii-a;? hand in any of the possible positions'which it might occupy. Now let him close hiseyes and let the hand.be picked up and the handand arm moved. He may Eiable to localise thegRqt iouched on the skin surface perfectly well,but iittETe?Sit to the position in which the handwas, because he has entirely lost the capacity to

",relate serial moyemetrts. IrBages may be intact;appreciation of relative rnovement lost. Con-versely, as everybody knorvs, appreciatiofr-6?morrnent may be as perfect as ever it can bervithout any appearance of images. It is fuSile tosa)' that in these cases the images are .ro rJk"lloi:io tl"eetinp that rve do not norice themJhetruth is that with all the effort in the world rvecannot notice them; and since the evidence fortheir absence is similar in sourcd anj characterto that citgl- for their presence on other occasions,it is most unjustifiable to accept the laner andto reject the former.

4eggl{ngln Head jus$yCiscarded the notionof individual images" or tr"..s}ii-proposed inits plage a different solution-one tuhi.h i, .ut-tainly speculative, offErs difficulties .of its own,and has nver yt been properly wjfked out; butone which seemJ to me to have great advantageswhen rye are dealirrg luth these somewhet ele,roentary insaffffithe persisrent effects of pastreactions. I believe, also, that it points the way to4 satisfactory solution of the phenomena ofremembering in t-he full sensaAt this point l.must quot Head's own words:"Every recognisable (postural) change enters intoconsciousness already charged-witFiis-'ielationio sonrething that has gone before, just as on a

-l*p.qJ!_e3 the distance is presented to us alreadytransformed iato shillings and p.-e-!ge- So the finalproduct of the lests for the appreciation ofPpsrure, or of passivg lnovement, rises into co.n-jglgltslcu;s a measured postural changeFor this combined srandard, against whichrill sghrqgge$changes of posture are measuredbefore they enter conscioxsness, we propose theword 'schema'. By mearr_s of perpetual alterationsin position we are always buildiog up a posturalmo,iel of ourseh-es which constantly changes.

-Er.ery nEwposturr of .rnovement is recorded onthis plastic schema, and the activitv of the cortexbrings every fresh group ofsensations evoked byaltelEd pss1u16 into relation with ir Immediatepostural recognition follows as soon as the rela-tion is complete."

rhe mostpersistntprobrern$oriecarrarconcern ;f"":r-#1"S"#.TfflnTrl"ii'lF#ti"fitHtthe ways in whkh past experiences and pasr reac- FOUI."* tftousz:tfffEFmmrefanvelESstions ar utili.red when anything is remembeied. cSmptb:rtares of deterrnination-ory*en"t reac-Frorn a general point of view it looks as if the titrns-by--thE--tri3r"A:reriy *S;'th'ii is the line ofsimplect cxplanation available is. to suppose that ape;d;fi t'Jiffiicb the argJilent of the precedingwhen any specific event occurs, Sffi*tritET or chapter has commined us, for it was there indi-sornc groupo{riac?iijis made an}T6ffifr in ."t"d th.t very*prffiably the outstanding charac-the ortanisrn o;It-i6mind. taler, an irnmediate teristics of remembering aU foiit'v*&oiili change!-limulus ro-gxcites the trace, or group6Fftee6;*' of attitude rcrvards those masses of organisedinili |;ii;ula.a a fruther assumption is made to past experieiiEs*in? reactions which function in ,i ,thc cffect that the tracc sornehow carries with it all high-ler-el mental processes. WlnW '*''a tomporal sign, the;e-cxcitement appears to be If this be admitted, there is an :*Jig4{tCIy icquivalent to recallffhere is, of course, no direct interesting uav of approach to the problems ofevidencc 6'r such traces, but the assumption at recall aloug a lim of studies which rvould often,.6rst sight seems tb be e verv.simple one, an{ so - :. Do doub-t, be called neurological rather than ps'y..it_Leg Sg-5'r.gg!y !.9en pade. chologicatr, and this I propose to explore. DuringYet th?re are obyi,ous difficulties. The traces man)t years Sir l,{enry Head gg{e'.d, orrt system-are gener'ally supposed to be of individual an{ .l atic observatisns on the nature and funptioqs of . .*,p"Jfi. "u"n,r. folqsg, "".t;;'-J r"!r'rJi#"""'"ft'.r.nt sensibitity, qai df6Sj"8Fffidt.'t.fitE-6 dmust carry about with him an inCalculable tions rlhich are :S;;rB*6i; the stimulation ofnurnber of individqal traces. Since these are all _ g.dpbS$ nerves. He was particularly interesttdstored in a single organism, theyare in lact bound ' in the funcrions and character qf the sens4tipnsto be related one to another, and this gfiii to which can be ar_r:::4 Uy the stimulation of nerverecall itg inevitubly asqociative charac.ter; but all endings in $diffi}nd the underlying tissues,the tinre each eace retains its essential individual- and in those rvhich are initiated by the con-trac-iry, and remembering, in the ideal case, is simple tion and rela-tation of muscles. He wished to 6nd

l. The Flethod of Apprsach its ryccific cheracter. If we are to trcat remember-

re-excitation, or purc reproduction, out e-lcactl,v rt'hat part is play'ed by the cortex rnNolv we have seen that a study of the actual interpretine and relating these sensations, or thefacts of perceiying?.and recognising suggests nerve impulses of rvhich the sensations may besrronglyEd-G all' relatively simple cases of regarded as a sign. One oi the most irnportantdetermination by past experiences and reactions, and interesting of these groups ofimpulses con-the past operates as an organised mass rather sists of those rvlich ql{gqlle-the recognition ofthan asagroup of eremenrs each of which retains J#.11}:1f"."1rff';".ilTllligGu

a large number of perfectly well-adapted andco-ordinated no\:ernents. l.YhCS.y# these arearranged in a series, each successive movement ismade as ifit ruere under the control and directionof the preceding movements in the same serio.

Fronr F. C. Rartlett (l9l?). Remenbering: A srutly inaVerinentil and social psychologr. Cambridge: Cam-bridge Llniversity Press.

And again: *The sensory cortex is the storE:I9.HS of past impressions. They may rise intoconsciousness as images, but more oftel, as in thecase ofspecial iqpressions, remain outside centralconsciousness, Here.they form organised modelsolourselves which may be called schemata. Suchschemata modifu the impressions produced byincoming sensory impulses in such a way that thefinal sensations of position or of locality*l: intoconsciousness charged with a relation to some-thing that has gone before."Although I am going to utilise these notionsin developing a theory of remembering, I mustclaim the prerogative ofa psychologist ofobject-ing to the terrninology of another rvriter. Thereare several points in the briefdescriptions I havequored that seem ro me t6-iiesent difficulty.

First, Head gives away tlr too much to earlieritttsLtlg*|9* rvhen he speaks of the cortex as "a

8/3/2019 A Theory of Remembering

2/3

398 Chapter 1I: Cognitive Psycholaglts{otehouse of past irrpressions"' Ail dNat bisexperiments shJwis tt**l eer'eq'iirprT*Tt1ai-T-liJ'.#E-qg_sf;1 *:--|:*r*s**x*u*i5normal part..'eitiflittie crit oirt UY leiutlg

term'ssbm4- when it seecrs best ts do so' tutI nfl uttempt to defiEre itr gPdFarioo 'Brenarrowly'"Sdtnna" refers .to en astive organisation ofeast;ctions' or of past expe'riences' whiih'must}ru# Uo supposed to be operating in any wcll-adaoted organic resp-onse' That is' whenever thctoi. "rrv ord"-, ot r*gularitT ofbehaviour' a Paiticu'L .r.pont is pJssrible only becadse it is relatcdto othk drnilsrresPonses which havc bettr scri-allv organise4 y.t *hich oPGratG' not simply as#iuid"a members coming one afut anothcr'but as a unitary mass. Determination by sche'rnata is the most fundainntal of all the wayr in,uhich we can, be influenced by rtactions anderoeriences rr'hich occurred some time in theoort. Nl incoming impulses of a ibrtain kin4 ormode" go together to birild up an actiru organ-iJ t.i.itgi.isual, auditory, various q'pes ofc.rtao.ut, impolses and the like' 'at a relativ+lyldw level; all the experienees conrrected by a.commod iiiireresi: in spon, in literanre' histcryrrri t"i.n.., philosophy and so on" on a higherl*v.l. Th.r. is not the slig;htest reason' honrei'er',o ,tppo* that each set of incorning irnpulses'.uatt n.no g.uop ofexpenences persists as-an lso-UJ n .riU.t of some passive patchworliTheyi"u. * be regarded as coristituedts of liring*o*u"ot" seiings belonging to tfre otganism'or to whaiel'er Barts of the organism.are con'cerned in maliing response of a given kind'.ano"oi-"t " .ttU"r-of individual events somehow,"u"g ,og",h"t and stored within the otgaisr*t...13. The Constructive Ctaracter ofRemembering

diately prectding bahnce of poetures.and themsrnantdfl nee& of &e 6arfre" Every tirb.wsrnaka it, it hasits ou,n oharacteristics.The long series of experiments which I havedescribed were direc,ted to the obseryation ofnormal processes of remembering. I discardednonsense. material beca,use, among other difficul-ties, itr use qlrrtost a.hvap w.eigfrts the evidence infaVout of $rere rote recapitlr&ition,.and fipr themost part I used exacdy the type of material thatwe have to deal with in daily life. In the manythorisands of cases of remembering which I col-lectecl" a considerable irurnber of which I hav6recsrded here, Lite.ral recall'was ve.ry rare. Withfew exceptions, the sigrrificance of which I willdiscuss shordn re-excitement of individual racesdid not look to be in the least what was happen-inglCdnsiiGf particularly the case in which asubject was remembering a stor,' which he heard,say, five years previously, in corrparissn witltthecase in lvhich he was giveir certain oudine materi-als and constructs what he calls a new story. I havetried the latter elqeriment repeatedly, and notonly the astual form and content of the results,butwhat is of more riglirificance for the mornent,the attitudes ofthe subject in these two cases wersgikingly similar, In both sises, it was corRmonto find the preliminiqr check, rhe stnugle to getsornewhere, the varying Blav ofdoubt, hesitatioa,satisfrction and the like, and the eventual build-ing up of the comphte story accompanied by themore and more confident advance in a certaindirection. In fact, if we consider evidence ratherthan presupposition, remernbering appears to behr more decisively an affair of constructionrather than one of mere reproduction. The dif-ference between the two cases, if it rvete put in' Head's terminology, sems to be that in rmetrn-bcring a man constructs on the basis of one"schema", whereas in rvhat is eommonly calledimaging he more or less fteely builds togetherevents, incidents and experiences that have goneto the makiog of, several difrerent "schemata"which for the purposes of rutomatic reaction,are not normally in connexion with one another.Even this difference is largely only a general one,lor as has been shown again and again, condensa-tion, elaboration and invention are common fba-h:tes o[ordinary remembering, and those all veryoften involve the mingling of materials belongingoriginally to diffefent "schemata".

4. A The.ory ef Rolrennbering.ln attmpting to dwelopa &eogy-of tht wholernatterr so far as I c.an see ig we must bngin withan organism which has only a ftw serisc ayenueg,or connenion wkh its covironrnent, and only afer4 correlated series of movements. but is dcvoid@*.d^of all the so-called higher mcrrtal functions. Tothis organism l{ead's riotions, dcriwd ftom amass of crperimentol obsorva iorr$ hew the mostperfect rp'pltcability. Any rcactlon of luch rnorganisrn whkh'hac morc than a mrte rnomGn-tary significarrce is dcternnincd by the activity ofa "schcmd'ih telatiqn to sotte ncw incomingimpulse set up byan irlrmediatelyprcsented stim.Ulus. Sincc ite sensory eq.uipmnt and the corre-lated moven'rents are very lirnited in range, andiince the .mode of organisation of the "schema-follows a direct chronological sequence, circular-ity of reaction, tlre repctition over and ov.et agrinof a series of reactions, is very prominent. Habits,moreover, are relatively easily formed as is wit-nessed by a grat ifiIiliiitT?t ."rch oi"n .xper-imental nature upon the lower aniinals. From theirutside, all this may look like the gontinual re-excltenrent ofwell-established traces; but it is not.It is simpll" the maintenance of few "schemata",each of which has iti natural and essential timeorder.

Howevgr, in the course of developrnent thespecial sense avenus increase.in number andran$e, and concurrently dtere is an increase innuntber rnd varleqv of reactions. With this, anda matter of vital importance, as my expdmentsrepeatedl,v show, Soes a great growth of sociatr life,and the developtnent of merns of comrnunica-tion. Then the *schema" detarinined reactions ofone organism are repeatedly checked, as well asconstandy facilitated, by those of others. All thisgrorwh of coinplexity makes ciriularity of reac-tion, rrtere rote recapitulation and habit behav-iour often both waste.firl and inefficient. A newincoming impulse must become not merely a cuesetting up a series ot'reactions all carried out ina lixed temporal order, but a stirnulus rvhichenables us to go direct to that portion of theorganised setting of past responses which is mostrelevant to the needs of the mornent.There is one way in which an organism couldlearn horv to do this- h may be the only way. Atahy rate, it is the rv'sr thathus been discov-ered and

I ;;;;;il' r"i"i""''16'* '"ish'-mEII"sffiliCaGE- iiouoaY wtro is assufferingfrsm a raging toothache could catrrnly reeitl "Oh';;-;"jiIfr" a rcd' red rose"' the i** are a,.oori,ow of lyric poetry' In any case' I *lott-h6[s. it I pt"tt where t]iings ar Put in ttre hoPeni" ,tt"y may b fotrnd egain-whe1 they are,ur"t a *"afy as they 'vere when f1t storeda*ay. fh" schumata are' we are told-' living' con-orn'Oy a"ueloping, affec-ted by-wery bit of incom-i"g-r.**io"i dt?;tl*t; of a given kind' ThestJrehouse notion is as far removed from this asit well ceuld be''- S..onaty, Head constantly uses the P:rFJgFnBPht;t. "tLiggiqllo consciousness'' It may be thecase that ln o"tp$iil'?iicumstances an unwit';;;;"" oiposition is actually known as'a$#*tt.a" po"'tt"l change' But this is. not them; ; iery duy,many times over''rve-make q-csu:gl;;soror'"dintf*,e;1p9.i-l wh ich' if Flead is right'6e schemata are active; without any Ly1l9lsi"+s

3!1, so far as the mastrre of the changing posturesis concerned'- ffritaf,", and perhaps most -imPortant' Istrongly iitfike thu te.rni "schema'' I!-S-e!-SqS'e*ioo aln"it* toa too eketchy' The word is already;i$ti;s"A'in?o3 ti$rrljal psvchologicat w-11ttnc, .r gu"t'nllv t"gf-t:iki:1g.:lfo9g-t!ulsd'theory. It suggests some persistent' but hagmen-;;?f;;itrrangcme;t'' and it does not indi-c"te *hot is very essential to the whole notion',ttu, rtt. organised trqa$ results ofpast changes ofpositiorr and p3sture are actively doing-some-fui"g af the tinre; are' ;o to speak' carried along*itir- ,rr, comPleter though developing' tronrmoment to moment' Iet iiis certainly vgry dilfi-cult to think ofany beter single desqriptive-wordio .o"", the facts inrolvtri' It would probably be;;..peak of "active" developing patterns"; but\,;; t;t; "pattern"' too' being norv very widely. ' '. " * i-"rnd variousll emploled' has its own difficulties;t i ]' : " ""i ,.rk. 's.h.-"'J, suggests a greater articrln-'it:'ll t." "ii.pil than is norrnally found' I thinkrl c tl I t prot"ttr" the terr'n "brganised'settingl:iipproxi'Lorr* *,t*' eit'lcli'' rnd clearly to tlre notionrequire'd. I shai!' lrnivel'er' continue to use the

we must, then, considei rvhat does ":*4 ';1$'happen more often than not when we saythrtwc ;":-r;gremember. The first notion to get rid of is tbat'E'{i';;;;;t is priirrrrily or literatly-reduplic.ati*e' or :;-$1;";'J.;i:.. i' " ,uorld of constantlv t\Ti},l $'environment, literal reeall is ettraorsurur,i;porr"n,. It is with rememberin8'alii rs.il ;;k;;; a skilled game' lrre maY fancY dtlwe are repeadng a series of mol'e-"."" lt"I:i""" ii*'. b.fo".. f,om a txt-bdok or &oo""i:n..'i", *.,i"t1i"ay shos's that in fect ';;il;o;. ';'"ke afresh on a basis of the

8/3/2019 A Theory of Remembering

3/3

.( ls continually used. An orgahism has somehowto acquire the capacity !o rurn round upon itsown'ischernata' and to construct them afresh'This is a crucial step in organic development' Itis where and why consciousness coines in; it iswhat gives consciousness its most prominentfunction. I wish I knew exacdy horv it llras dsne'On the basis of my experimeats I can make oneswge$ion, although I do so with some hesita-tion Suppose an individual to be confronted bya complir situation. This is the case with whichI began the whole series of experimerits, the casein which an observer is perceiving' imd is sayingimmediately what it is that he has perceived' Wesaw that in this case an individual does not nor-mally take such a situation detail by detail andmctiqulously build up the whole' ln all ordinaryinstances he has an over-mastering tendenqvsimpll'to get a general impression of the whole;and, on thl basis olthis, he constructs the prob-able detail. Very little of his construction is liter-ally obscrved and often, as was easily demonstratedexperimqntally, a lot of it is distorted or wrong sofaias thc actual facts are concerned. But it is thesort of construction rvhich serves to justify hisgeneral impression' Ask the observer to charac-ierise this-general impression psychologically'and the w'ord that is always cropping up is *atti-tude". I have sholvn how this "attitude" factorcame into near\ evcry series of experiments thatwas carried out- The construction that is effectedis the sort of coni-tructioi-that would iustifi' theobserver's' atiitiid.ilFid& names a complexpsychological state or pti6ii'hi.h it is veryirard ro desc rib J iir*mWlem en ta ry p s,r'cho I o g i -cal terms. It is, hbTf\f;as I have often indicated,very largely a ,f,iEiEf f..ling, or aftect. lve saythat it i: characterised by doubt, hesitation' sur-prise, astonishment' confi dence, dislike, repulsionand so on. Here is the significance of the fact'often reported in the preceding Pages' that k'hena subiect is being asked to remember, very oftenthe 6rst thing that enrerges is something of thenlturg of cltitude. The recall is then a construc-tion, made [argel.v on the basis of this anitude,and is general eftlct is that of a justification ofthe artitude.

A rapid sun'c'1' t'rf the experimental results rvillshorv this factor at rt'ork in different subjects andosith ii''.:rre nrateriuls and methods, in the case*f ertr.v ui:e of rn-v exPerinental series' In the

Perception Series the subjects got their-generalimpression, felt the material prcsented to be,.g;ul"t, ot exciting, or farniliar and so on, andbJilt up their results by the aid of that and a littledefinitelv observed detail. In thc Imaging Segies,I have recorded a number ofcases where' particu-larly in the case of the subjects Prone to personalreminiscence, an attitude developed into a con-crete and detailed imaginal construction' WithThe fulethod of Dacription the affective attitudeopenly influenced the recall. Reputed REraduc'rion yielded many cases in which the stories orothei rnaterial were 6rst charactised as "exciting"'"adventurous", "like what I read when I rvas aboy',labelled in some wayor other, and then builtup or'iemerobered". The instance in ruhich TheWar of rhe Ghosts rvas constructed gradually froma little general starting-point, after a very longinterr,"l, is a brilliant' but by rio means isolated'illustration of this constnrctive character of recall'Serial Reproduction showed the sarne features inthe readiness with which material assurned estab-lished conventional forms, and The Picurre SignMethorl alsbbrought out the same point repeat-edly. I have atternPted to observe as closely aspoisible the behaviour of young children whenth"y ru*"rnb.r. So far as it is valid to.guess fromthii what are the processes actually going on, herealso, in very many instances, there comes first anattitude .and then the recall of the material insuch a way as to satisry, or fortifo, *t tfiltrrde'The constant rationalisation lshich rememberingeffects is a special case of the functionipg of thisconstructit character upon rvhich memory islargely based.i\'Lat, precisely, does the "schema" do?Together with the immediately preceding incom-ing-impulse it renders a speci6c adaptive reacdonpo-ssibie. It is, theretbre, producing an orientationif th. orgunir* to*"u.ds rvhatever it is directedto at thelnoment. But that orientation must bedominated by the immediately preceding reat-tion or experiences. To break away from this the"schema" must become' not nrerely somethingthat rvorks the organism, but something rvtthrvhich the organism can rvork As I will showlater, its constituents nray perhaps begin to bcreshuftled on a basis of purely physical and physt-ological determinants. This method is not radrc&eno-rgh. So the organisrn discovers holv to turo;;;#- "p"" its o"*'n "schemata", or' in othet .,1..+

words, it becomes conscious. It may be that whatthen emerges is an attitude towards the massedeffects of a series of past rmctions. Rememberingis a constructive justification of this attirude; an4because all that goes to the building ofa "schema-has a chronological, as welt as a qualitative, sig-nilicance, what is rernembered has its tempo*lmark; while the tact that it is operating with adir.erse organised mass, and not with single undi_versified events or units, gil.es to remornberingits inevitable associative character. lVhether oinot the attitude is a geneticolty primitive char-' acteristic possessing this function in recall is, ofcour.se, a speculative matter. I think it is, butnothing is sen'ed by dogmatism at this point.The experiments do, however, appear to demon-strate that, at the level of human remembering,the attitude functions in the way I havesuggested.

t...1

7. A SummaryRemembering is not the re.excitation of innu-merable fixed, lifeless and fragmenrary trages.

. It is an irnaginative reconstruction or constnrc- -tion, built out of the retation of our attitudetowards a rr'hole active mass of organiqed pastreactions or erperience, and to a little outstand-11S-agait which commonly appeals inTilpbr- in language form. It is thus hardly ever reallyexact, even in the most rudimentary cases ofrote recapitulation, and it is not at all importantthat it should be so. The attitude is literally aneftlct of the organism's capaciqv to rurn roundupon its olvn "schemata", and is directly a func_tion of consciousness. The outstanding detail isthe result of that rraluation of.items in an organ,ised mass rnhich begins with the functioningappetite and instinct, and goes rnuch further

with the grolvth of interesrs and ideals. Evenapart troni their appearance in the fornr of_cll:9li1l ima.ges, or as language forms, srrnie ofthe items of a m4ss ma1' stand out by virtucof their possession of certain physicai charac-' teristics. But there is no evidence that these can

operate_ in determining a specific reaction, exceptafter relatively short periods of delay. ThE aaiiesettings rvhich are chiefiy important at the levelof human remembering are mainly qinterest',seftings; and, since an interest has both a definitedirectioa and a wide range, the developrrrent ofthese settings involves much reorganisation ofthe "schemata" that follow the more prirnitivelines of special sense differences, of apfttite andof instinct. So, since many "schemata'; are builtof common materials, d.re images and lvordsthat mark some of their salient features are inconstant, but explicable, change They, too, area dgvica made possible by the appearance, ordiscoverv, of consciousnesq and without themno genuine long-distance remembering wouldbe possible.It rnal'be said that this theory after all doesvdry little. It- merely jumbles together innumera-ble traces ani'liils them "schemata", and then itpicls out a few and calls them images. But I tfrinkthis would be hardly fair criticism. AII conven-tional theories of mqmory as reduplicative try totreat traces as sornehory stored up like so manydefinite impressions, 6xed and having only thecapacity of being reexcited. The active sttings,

' rrhich are involved in the way oflooking at thematter der.eloped in the pres.ent chapter, are livingand developing, are a complex expression of thelife of the momenr, and help ro determine ourdaily modes of conduct. The theory bringsrernembering into line with imagining, an expresision of the same activities; it has very differentimplications in regard to forgetting from those ofthe oidinary trace vierv; it gives to consciousnessa definite function other than the rnere tact r:fbeing aruare. This last point is not entirely unim-portant. There is an active school in current ps,r,.chological controversy rvhich rvould banish all*reference rocorr@retute this school by asserting vigorously that ofc.ourse lr'e knolr' that wd are conscious. But this isfutile, for rvhat they are really baiing is that con.sciousness carrrrot eftect an\.thingihat could notequally tr'ell be done without it. Thar is a positionless easy to demolish. If I am right, horvever, theyare lvrong.