One of the startling, yet essential activities of the human mind is its ability to reach backward from the present moment and to reinstate the ideal values of the chief features of its past -experiences. This is the conserving action, which alone enables a mind's experience to thicken and to widen. Several sorts of words are in vogue to describe this mode of consciousness. It is called revival, reproduction, remembering, knowing, etc. That this activity is constantly in evidence in normal mental states, there can be no question. That it embraces the contents of all possible forms of sense-impression, idea, and action is assuredly -attested by the crassest analysis of the extent and quality of the average individual's attitude towards himself and to the things which surround him.

How is it that the mind is able to remember? How shall we understand this weird proceeding of re-vivifying the dead and gone past? However far it may be, that one has led himself from entertaining and depending upon the half-mediaeval view that this activity is the particular and inseparable function of a distinct faculty, or disposition, of the mind, it remains forever true, that he cannot dispense in his analyses with all reference to that which the old-time "faculty" meant. An analysis of consciousness cannot be accurate, nor claim any approach to ex-haustiveness, which does not recognize remembering as one of its most highly specialized activities that has its roots and beginnings in the lowest and unorganized forms of mental experience. No attempt to depict the nature and scope of the development of that mental experience can be successful without turning our attention ever and anon to the support afforded to that development by the variety and intensity of the material presented in the performances of memory. The make-up and the forward push of a mind are thus conditioned by the scope of its ability to conserve the past stages of its development.

This truth does not warrant one in presuming that every item contained in passing conscious experience must be preserved "for future use."

Too often, on the other hand, "memory" is regarded as a receptacle for a few specific things; as, when one can recall the dates of certain historical events so many years after having first learned those facts; this, for example, is said to be the special office of memory. This is too abstract a way, however, of noting the intricacy of mental action. Indeed, we are constantly com-mitting. so to speak, the contents of our passing experience to our memories, although we are not consciously aware of doing so (excepting those relatively few instances when we insist to ourselves that a or 6 must be remembered, etc.). It is sufficient to observe that, not only is all mental experience primarily dependent upon sense and motor impressions, but clear and intense normal consciousness is constantly dependent upon the activity of true memory.

The knowledge we get in every act of remembering is complex, rather than simple. Retaining the "idea" of a given fact or event, recalling that idea at any given time, and being able to recognize it as this idea, rather than that idea, in my experience, - i. e., to discriminate it with its specific historical attachments from all other ideas, - all this is involved in a full act of memory. Ordinarily these phases appear in a varying order from time to time, except that recognition is logically and psychologically dependent upon retention and revival. The appropriate images must be "brought up" into consciousness before the act of memory can be said to occur. Memory, then, requires original ex-perience, some sort of a' retention of the "traces" of the neural conditions thereof, a revival of an image, or idea, which stands for the original experience by reason of being derived from it, and a recognition of this symbolization by putting the meaning of the reproduction into the proper past time of my own. experience. All of which is more or less modified by feelings of belief or disbelief in the value of the representation. Retention is purely physiological.

Reproduction depends upon the so-called laws of association, namely the tendency of one idea to link itself dynamically to other ideas. The element of recognition is essentially dependent upon the cognitive act of the mind.

"Suggestion" is nowadays one of the most familiar terms in the entire vocabulary of psychology. The term is used in a "suggestive" way in the treatment of normal consciousness with reference to the cohesion of ideas and other mental states implied in the association of ideas and other processes of ideation. As it is said, almost universally now, the presence of a given idea (a; in consciousness "suggests" the idea (b), tending to bring b into -he clear circle of consciousness. To explain the appearance of a mental state by suggestion, is to imply that its factors dominate by having been forced into the sphere of consciousness. This dynamic aspect pertains to suggestion throughout its application. It is well illustrated by the fact that hypnotic suggestions, to be efficient, must be made in the form of commands, rather than as simple declarations or mild entreaties. The spontaneity of the realization of the content of a suggestion is one of its most striking peculiarities, though this is not always constant.

In most idea-motor suggestions, the ratio of realization to the intensity of the suggestion varies directly, if one might speak in mathematical terms.

The use of the term "suggestion" has been increased particularly through the analysis of hypnosis offered by the Nancy school during the last thirty-five years (Liebault, Bernheim, Moll) It is the key offered for most, if not all, of the phenomena presented by hypnosis. As an explanation, it can be considered only as a mode of introducing something to the mind. It is "carrying" ideas into the mind covertly, so to speak, and abruptly from without. It is a means of addressing the attention of the subject through channels more complex than those of ordi-narv sensory and motor stimulation. It is important to observe that suggestion, as a cause, is rather a. psychological factor than a physiological factor. This must be kept in mind constantly. It is emphasized by a consideration of the particular tenets of the three great schools of abnormal psychology, to which reference only can be made here. It may be necessary to observe, in passing, that many of the phenomena to be mentioned are not produced by suggestion solely, but may arise out of a number of conditions, such as fatigue, imperfect nutrition, disease, injury, etc.