Indeed the action of the memory brings to the mind of the audience ever so much which gives fuller meaning and ampler setting to every scene—­yes, to every word and movement on the stage.  To think of the most trivial case, at every point of the drama we must remember what happened in the previous scenes.  The first act is no longer on the stage when we see the second.  The second alone is now our sense impression.  Yet this second act is in itself meaningless if it is not supported by the first.  Hence the first must somehow be in our consciousness.  At least in every important scene we must remember those situations of the preceding act which can throw light on the new developments.  We see the young missionary in his adventures on his perilous journey and we remember how in the preceding act we 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.