It might be said that in this case the revival is often artificially produced, and associated with special circumstances; but it seemed to me of too clear and definite a character to be omitted.
I need not point out that these individual differences in the revivability of emotional states certainly play a great part in the constitution of different types of character. Moreover, the existence of variations of the emotional type cuts short the question, acrimoniously debated by some writers, whether pains can be more easily remembered than pleasures. Optimists and pessimists have fought fiercely over this phantasmal problem; but it is a vain and factitious question so long as we suppose that it admits of but one solution. There is not, and cannot be, a general answer.
Certain individuals revive joyful images with astonishing facility; sad memories, when they arise, are immediately and easily trodden down. I know an inveterate optimist, successful in all his undertakings, who has much difficulty in picturing to himself the few reverses that he has experienced. “I remember joys much more easily than painful states” is an answer I frequently meet with in my notes.
On the other hand, there are many who say, “I remember sorrows much more easily than pleasurable states.” In the course of my inquiries I have found that the latter are the most numerous; but I do not see my way to draw any conclusion from this fact. One says, “I find it much easier to revive unpleasant feelings, whence my tendency to pessimism. Joyous impressions are evanescent. A painful recollection makes me sad at a joyful moment; a joyful recollection does not cheer me at a sad one.”
These are straightforward cases. Outside them the question above stated can only be solved at haphazard, and by a merely mental view.
3. Revivability depends on cerebral and internal conditions (whatever these may be, known or unknown) rather than on the primary impression itself. To feel emotions acutely and revive them acutely are two widely different operations; one does not imply the other. We have seen that, in many cases, revivability even seems to be in inverse ratio to the intensity of the initial phenomenon. This brings us back to the question of characters. It does not matter whether the impression is a vivid one; what is wanted is that it should be fixed. Often it is heightened by a process of latent incubation depending on individual temperament. Chateaubriand, speaking of a gamekeeper to whom he was much attached, and who was killed by a poacher, says, “My imagination (at sixteen) pictured to me Raulx holding his entrails in his hands, and dragging himself to the hut where he died. I conceived the idea of revenge; I wished to fight the murderer. In this respect I am singularly constituted; at the moment of a blow I scarcely feel it, but it engraves itself on my memory; the recollection, instead of being weakened, grows stronger with time; it sleeps in my heart for years together, then the most trivial circumstance awakens it with renewed force, and my wound becomes more painful than on the first day.”[[107]] Here we have another analogy with what takes place in the order of objective impressions. It is not sufficient to have good eyes in order to have a good visual memory, and I know short-sighted persons whose inner vision is excellent.[[108]]
I may terminate this inquiry, which is a sketch rather than a study of the subject, by reminding the reader that the facts ascertained for the other, the intellectual part of memory, have not been the work of one man or of one day.[[109]]
CHAPTER XII.
THE FEELINGS AND THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS.
The function of the feelings, as the cause of association—The law of affective association, conceived as general, and as local—I. Function of unconscious feeling: ancestral or hereditary unconsciousness; personal unconsciousness arising from cœnæsthesia; personal unconsciousness arising from the events of our life—Law of transference by contiguity, by resemblance: wide or narrow—II. Function of the conscious feelings: accidental cases, permanent cases, exceptional or rare cases.
In this chapter we have still to deal with the relation between the feelings and the memory, but under quite another form, seeing that we have to study the feelings as a cause. Instead of establishing, as we have hitherto done, that there is such a thing as a real memory of the feelings, our present aim is to determine the function of states of feeling in the recalling of recollections and the association of ideas. Their importance as a hidden factor of revivability has been recognised by several contemporary writers,[[110]] some even having a tendency to exaggerate it.