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vation of the ordinary acts that go to make up the routine of life. But, while weakness of the memory is the rule, frequent exceptions are found. Among victims of congenital amnesia there are some whose memories, within certain limits, have been very remarkable.

It has long been observed that in many idiots and imbeciles the senses are very unequally developed; thus, the hearing may be of extreme delicacy and precision, while the other senses are blunted. The arrest of development is not uniform in all respects. It is not surprising, then, that general weakness of memory should co-exist in the same subject with the evolution and even hypertrophy of a particular memory. Thus, certain idiots, insensible to all other impressions, have an extraordinary taste for music, and are able to retain an air which they have once heard. In rare instances there is a memory for forms and colors, and an aptitude for drawing. Cases of memory of figures, dates, proper names, and words in general, are more common. An idiot "could remember the day when every person had been buried in the parish for thirty-five years, and could repeat with unvarying accuracy the name and age of the deceased, and the mourners at the funeral. Out of the line of burials he had not one idea, could not give an intelligible reply to a single question, nor be

trusted even to feed himself."* Certain idiots, unable to make the most elementary arithmetical calculations, repeat the whole of the multiplication table without an error. Others recite, word for word, passages that have been read to them, and can not learn the letters of the alphabet. Drobisch reports the following case of which he was an observer: A boy of fourteen, almost an idiot, experienced great trouble in learning to read. He had, nevertheless, a marvelous facility for remembering the order in which words and letters succeeded one another. When allowed two or three minutes in which to glance over the page of a book printed in a language which he did not know, or treating of subjects of which he was ignorant, he could, in the brief time mentioned, repeat every word from memory exactly as if the book remained open before him.† The existence of this partial memory is so common that it has been utilized in the education of idiots and imbeciles. It is worth noting that

* Forbes Winslow, op. cit., p. 561.

+ Drobisch, "Empirische Psychologie," p. 95.-Dr. Herzen has told me of the case of a Russian, aged twenty-seven, who became an imbecile through excessive dissipation. He retained nothing of the brilliant talents of his youth with the exception of an extraordinary memory, being able to work out at sight the most difficult problems in arithmetic and algebra, and to repeat, word for word, long passages of poetry after a single reading.

See, on this subject, Ireland "On Idiocy and Imbecility," London, 1877.

idiots attacked by mania or some other acute disease frequently display a temporary memory. Thus, “an idiot, in a fit of anger, told of a complicated incident of which he had been a witness long before, and which at the time seemed to have made no impression upon him."*

In cases of congenital amnesia, the exceptions are the most instructive. The law only confirms a common truth-viz., that memory depends upon the constitution of the brain, and that in idiots and imbeciles the condition is abnormal. But the formation of limited partial memories will aid us in the comprehension of certain disorders to which we have not yet referred. I am inclined to believe that a careful study of mental symptoms in idiots would permit us to determine the anatomical and physiological conditions of memory. To this point we shall return in the following chapter.

* Griesinger, op. cit., p. 431.

CHAPTER III.

PARTIAL AMNESIA.

I.

BEFORE taking up the subject of partial amnesia, something remains to be said with regard to the varieties of memory. Without preliminary explanation, the facts which we shall cite would appear inexplicable and almost miraculous. That a person should be deprived of all recollection of words and retain the other faculties intact; that he should forget one language and retain his mastery of others; that a language long forgotten should suddenly return; that there should be loss of memory for music and for nothing elsethese are facts so singular. at first thought that, if they were not recorded by the most trustworthy observers, we would be inclined to class them with popular fables. If, on the contrary, we once have an accurate idea of what the word memory really means, the marvelous element disappears, and these facts, far from exciting our wonder, are

seen to be the natural and logical consequences of a morbid influence.

The use of the word memory in a general sense is perfectly justifiable. It designates a faculty common to all sentient and thinking beings-the possibility of conserving and reproducing impressions. But the history of psychology shows that it is too often forgotten that this general term, like all others of its class, is of value only when applied to particular cases, and that memory may be resolved into memories, just as the life of an organism may be resolved into the lives of the organs, the tissues, the anatomical elements, which compose it. "The ancient and still unexploded error," says Lewes, "which treats memory as an independent function, a faculty, for which a separate organ, or seat, is sought, arises from the tendency continually to be noticed of personifying an abstraction. Instead of recognizing it as the short-hand expression for what is common to all concrete facts of remembrance, or for the sum of such facts, many writers suppose it to have an existence apart."*

While common experience has long demonstrated the natural inequality of different forms of memory in the same individual, psychologists have either neglected this point or have denied its truthfulness. Dugald Stewart seriously affirms

*Op. cit., prob. ii, p. 119.

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