The World as Will and Idea, Vol. II — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp

ourselves in vain to recollect something, and go through the whole store of our thoughts in order to find any one that may be associated with the one we seek; if we find the former, the latter is also found. Whoever wishes to call up something in his memory first seeks for a thread with which it is connected by the association of thoughts.

Upon this depends mnemonics: it aims at providing us with easily found occasioners or causes for all the conceptions, thoughts, or words which are to be preserved. But the worst of it is that these occasioners themselves have first to be recalled, and this again requires an occasioner. How much the occasion accomplishes in memory may be shown in this way.

If we have nead in a book of anecdotes say fifty anecdotes, and then aave laid it aside, immediately afterwards we will sometimes be unable to recollect a single one of them. But f the occasion comes, or if a thought occurs to us which las any analogy with one of those anecdotes, it immeliately comes back to us; and so with the whole fifty is opportunity offers. The same thing holds good of II that we read.

Our immediate remembrance of vords, that is, our remembrance of them without the ssistance of mnemonic contrivances, and with it our rhole faculty of speech, ultimately depends upon the irect association of thoughts. For the learning of lanuage consists in this, that once for all we so connect a onception with a word that this word will always occur D us along with this conception, and this conception will lways occur to us along with this word.

"We have after- 'ards to repeat the same process in learning every new mguage ; yet if we learn a language for passive and not )r active use — that is, to read, but not to speak, as, for sample, most of us learn Greek — then the connection is le-sided, for the conception occurs to us along with the ord, but the word does not always occur to us along with te conception. The same procedure as in language be- >mes apparent in the particular case, in the learning of

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every new proper name. But sometimes we do not trust ourselves to connect directly the name of this person, or town, river, mountain, plant, animal, &c, with the thought of each so firmly that it will call each of them up of itself ; and then we assist ourselves mnemonically, and connect the image of the person or thing with any perceptible quality the name of which occurs in that of the persor or thing. Yet this is only a temporary prop to lean on later we let it drop, for the association of thoughts be comes an immediate support

The search of memory for a clue shows itself in i peculiar manner in the case of a dream which we hav< forgotten on awaking, for in this case we seek in vain fo that which a few minutes before occupied our minds wit! the strength of the clearest present, but now has entire! disappeared. We grasp at any lingering impression b which may hang the clue that by virtue of associatio would call that dream back again into our conscious ness. According to Kieser, " Tellurismus," Bd. ii. § 27 memory even of what passed in magnetic-somnainbuk sleep may possibly sometimes be aroused by a sensib' sign found when awake. It depends upon the san impossibility of the appearance of a thought withoi its occasion that if we propose to do anything at a del nite time, this can only take place if we either think » nothing else till then, or if at the determined time v are reminded of it by something, which may either 1 an external impression arranged beforehand or a thoug' which is itself again brought about in the regular wa Both, then, belong to the class of motives. Every mornii when we awake our consciousness is a tabula rasa, whic however, quickly fills itself again. First it is the si roundings of the previous evening which now reappe; and remind us of what we thought in these surrounding to this the events of the previous day link themselves 0 and so one thought rapidly recalls the others, till all tl occupied us yesterday is there again. Upon the fact tl

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