enders some more complicated theory necessary. Remembering has to be
a present occurrence in some way resembling, or related to, what is
remembered. And it is difficult to find any ground, except a pragmatic
one, for supposing that memory is not sheer delusion, if, as seems to be
the case, there is not, apart from memory, any way of ascertaining that
there really was a past occurrence having the required relation to our
present remembering. What, if we followed Meinong's terminology, we
should call the "object" in memory, i.e. the past event which we are
said to be remembering, is unpleasantly remote from the "content," i.e.
the present mental occurrence in remembering. There is an awkward gulf
between the two, which raises difficulties for the theory of knowledge.
But we must not falsify observation to avoid theoretical difficulties.
For the present, therefore, let us forget these problems, and try to
discover what actually occurs in memory.

Some points may be taken as fixed, and such as any theory of memory must
arrive at. In this case, as in most others, what may be taken as certain
in advance is rather vague. The study of any topic is like the continued
observation of an object which is approaching us along a road: what is
certain to begin with is the quite vague knowledge that there is SOME
object on the road. If you attempt to be less vague, and to assert that
the object is an elephant, or a man, or a mad dog, you run a risk of
error; but the purpose of continued observation is to enable you to
arrive at such more precise knowledge. In like manner, in the study of
memory, the certainties with which you begin are very vague, and the
more precise propositions at which you try to arrive are less certain
than the hazy data from which you set out. Nevertheless, in spite of the
risk of error, precision is the goal at which we must aim.

The first of our vague but indubitable data is that there is knowledge
of the past. We do not yet know with any precision what we mean by
"knowledge," and we must admit that in any given instance our memory may
be at fault. Nevertheless, whatever a sceptic might urge in theory,
we cannot practically doubt that we got up this morning, that we did
various things yesterday, that a great war has been taking place, and so
on. How far our knowledge of the past is due to memory, and how far to
other sources, is of course a matter to be investigated, but there can
be no doubt that memory forms