There is here
no question of learning by rote, of memorizing, but of capacity to
recall to mind a past experience. The boy who is clever at memorizing a
passage from Shakespeare may not have a good memory at all for recalling
past events. To understand why this is so we must examine these two
forms of Memory more closely and refer to Bergson's own words: "I study
a lesson, and in order to learn it by heart I read it a first time,
accentuating every line; I then repeat it a certain number of times. At
each repetition there is progress; the words are more and more linked
together, and at last make a continuous whole. When that moment comes,
it is said that I know my lesson by heart, that it is imprinted on my
memory. I consider now how the lesson has been learnt and picture to
myself the successive phases of the process. Each several reading then
recurs to me with its own individuality. It is distinguished from those
which preceded or followed it, by the place which it occupied in time;
in short, each reading stands out before my mind as a definite event in
my history. Again it will be said that these images are recollections,
that they are imprinted on my Memory. The same words then are used in
both cases. Do they mean the same thing? The memory of the lesson which
is remembered, in the sense of learned by heart, has ALL the marks of a
habit. Like a habit, it is acquired by the repetition of the same
effort. Like every habitual bodily exercise, it is stored up in a
mechanism which is set in motion as a whole by an initial impulse, in a
closed system of automatic movements, which succeed each other in the
same order and together take the same length of time.
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