memory, he declares (vol. i. p. 450) that "as fast as those
connections among psychical states, which we form in memory, grow by
constant repetition automatic--they CEASE TO BE PART OF MEMORY," or,
in other words, he again denies that there can be an unconscious
memory.

Mr. Spencer doubtless saw that he was involved in contradiction in
terms, and having always understood that contradictions in terms
were very dreadful things--which, of course, under some
circumstances they are--thought it well so to express himself that
his readers should be more likely to push on than dwell on what was
before them at the moment. I should be the last to complain of him
merely on the ground that he could not escape contradiction in
terms: who can? When facts conflict, contradict one another, melt
into one another as the colours of the spectrum so insensibly that
none can say where one begins and the other ends, contradictions in
terms become first fruits of thought and speech. They are the basis
of intellectual consciousness, in the same way that a physical
obstacle is the basis of physical sensation. No opposition, no
sensation, applies as much to the psychical as to the physical
kingdom, as soon as these two have got well above the horizon of our
thoughts and can be seen as two. No contradiction, no
consciousness; no cross, no crown; contradictions are the very small
deadlocks without which there is no going; going is our sense of a
succession of small impediments or deadlocks; it is a succession of
cutting Gordian knots, which on a small scale please or pain as the
case may be; on a larger, give an ecstasy of pleasure, or shock to
the extreme of endurance; and on a still larger, kill whether they
be on the right side or the wrong. Nature, as I said in "Life and
Habit," hates that any principle should breed hermaphroditically,