And it
is well that we do so. If it were not for the ability to forget, our
minds would be like a room in which we have lived a lifetime, where we
have left everything that has been brought into it since our birth. It
would be piled ceiling high, with no room for us, and with difficulty
only could we find what we want. As we grow from babyhood to childhood,
from childhood to youth, from youth to maturity the room changes with
us. We put off childish things. They are stored away somewhere, in an
attic or basement, or destroyed. And day after day something new is
added, displacing something else. In the case of the mind all these
things are stored and cataloged in the subconscious, and forgotten,
until some need causes us to look into our catalog-index and see the
experience again, or some association calls it back, relating it to
something new. So our discussion of the subconscious involved also a
discussion of memory.
But what of the things we must use frequently and cannot find in our
minds? What of absent-mindedness and faulty memory? In such cases our
minds might be compared to a cluttered room full of things we need and
want to use every day, but in confusion.
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