if every part of the central nerve system, by means of which movement
is effected, were not able {74a} to reproduce whole series of
vibrations, which at an earlier date required the constant and
continuous participation of consciousness, but which are now set in
motion automatically on a mere touch, as it were, from consciousness-
-if it were not able to reproduce them the more quickly and easily in
proportion to the frequency of the repetitions--if, in fact, there
was no power of recollecting earlier performances? Our perceptive
faculties must have remained always at their lowest stage if we had
been compelled to build up consciously every process from the details
of the sensation-causing materials tendered to us by our senses; nor
could our voluntary movements have got beyond the helplessness of the
child, if the necessary impulses could only be imparted to every
movement through effort of the will and conscious reproduction of all
the corresponding ideas--if, in a word, the motor nerve system had
not also its memory, {74b} though that memory is unperceived by
ourselves. The power of this memory is what is called "the force of
habit."

It seems, then, that we owe to memory almost all that we either have
or are; that our ideas and conceptions are its work, and that our
every perception, thought, and movement is derived from this source.
Memory collects the countless phenomena of our existence into a
single whole; and as our bodies would be scattered into the dust of
their component atoms if they were not held together by the
attraction of matter, so our consciousness would be broken up into as
many fragments as we had lived seconds but for the binding and
unifying force of memory.

We have already repeatedly seen that the reproductions of organic