saw him in his peaceful cottage
surrounded by the love of his parents and sisters and how they mourned
when he left them behind. The more exciting the dangers he passes
through in the far distant land, the more strongly does our memory carry
us back to the home scenes which we witnessed before. The theater cannot
do more than suggest to our memory this looking backward. The young hero
may call this reminiscence back to our consciousness by his speech and
his prayer, and when he fights his way through the jungles of Africa and
the savages attack him, the melodrama may put words into his mouth which
force us to think fervently of those whom he has left behind. But, after
all, it is our own material of memory ideas which supplies the picture.
The theater cannot go further. The photoplay can. We see the jungle, we
see the hero at the height of his danger; and suddenly there flashes
upon the screen a picture of the past. For not more than two seconds
does the idyllic New England scene slip into the exciting African
events. When one deep breath is over we are stirred again by the event
of the present. That home scene of the past flitted by just as a hasty
thought of bygone days darts through the mind.

The modern photoartist makes use of this technical device in an
abundance of forms. In his slang any going back to an earlier scene is
called a "cut-back." The cut-back may have many variations and serve
many purposes. But the one which we face here is psychologically the
most interesting. We have really an objectivation of our memory
function. The case of the cut-back is there quite parallel to that of
the close-up. In the one we recognize the mental act of attending, in
the other we must recognize the mental act of remembering. _In both
cases the act which in the ordinary theater would go on in our mind
alone is here in the photoplay projected into the pictures themselves.
It is as if reality has lost its own continuous connection and become
shaped by the demands of our soul._ It is as if the outer world itself
became molded in accordance with our fleeting turns of attention or with
our passing memory ideas.

It is only another version of the same principle when the course of
events is interrupted by forward glances. The mental function involved
is that of expectation or, when the expectation is controlled by our
feelings, we may class it under the mental function of imagination. The
melodrama shows us how the young million