At the end of his performance, his memory would appear to be no less
annihilated than was his consciousness of attention and volition.
For of the thousands of acts requiring the exercise of both the one
and the other, which he has done during the five minutes, we will
say, of his performance, he will remember hardly one when it is over.
If he calls to mind anything beyond the main fact that he has played
such and such a piece, it will probably be some passage which he has
found more difficult than the others, and with the like of which he
has not been so long familiar. All the rest he will forget as
completely as the breath which he has drawn while playing.

He finds it difficult to remember even the difficulties he
experienced in learning to play. A few may have so impressed him
that they remain with him, but the greater part will have escaped him
as completely as the remembrance of what he ate, or how he put on his
clothes, this day ten years ago; nevertheless, it is plain he
remembers more than he remembers remembering, for he avoids mistakes
which he made at one time, and his performance proves that all the
notes are in his memory, though if called upon to play such and such
a bar at random from the middle of the piece, and neither more nor
less, he will probably say that he cannot remember it unless he
begins from the beginning of the phrase which leads to it. Very
commonly he will be obliged to begin from the beginning of the
movement itself, and be unable to start at any other point unless he
have the music before him; and if disturbed, as we have seen above,
he will have to start de novo from an accustomed starting-point.

Yet nothing can be more obvious than that there must have been a time
when what is now so easy as to be done without conscious effort of