ABSTRACT
TH E REN EW AL OF IM AGES AS TH E FOU N DATION OF HIGHER PSY C H IC A L PERFO RM AN CES
cussed capacities of mental life, he would make little or no progress. An approximate but hardly adequate idea of the helplessness of such a mind is furnished us by the condition of senile weakness of memory in which no new impressions can be retained. In the analysis and explanation of the conscious phenomena dealt with up to the present, we al lowed the fact of renewal of images to go wholly or almost wholly unmentioned. We can no longer neglect the question, however, in the discussion of higher operations of the mind. If we always start from the immediately given conscious data, we shall come to the conviction that early experienced events reappear in the adult’s mind. The epistemological question as to whether our memories coincide with the actual past, and the psychological question as to how the conscious con tents, “ our early experiences,” generally come about, may be eliminated from present discussion.
