IMAGES AS THE MATERIAL OF MEMORY.--In the light of our discussion upon
mental imagery, and with the aid of a little introspection, the answer
is easy. I ask you to remember your home, and at once a visual image of
the familiar house, with its well-known rooms and their characteristic
furnishings, comes to your mind. I ask you to remember the last concert
you attended, or the chorus of birds you heard recently in the woods;
and there comes a flood of images, partly visual, but largely auditory,
from the melodies you heard. Or I ask you to remember the feast of
which you partook yesterday, and gustatory and olfactory images are
prominent among the others which appear. And so I might keep on until I
had covered the whole range of your memory; and, whether I ask you for
the simple trivial experiences of your past, for the tragic or crucial
experiences, or for the most abstruse and abstract facts which you know
and can recall, the case is the same: much of what memory presents to
you comes in the form of _images_ or of _ideas_ of your past.
