III.

To sum up, memory is a general function of the nervous system. It is based upon the faculty possessed by the nervous elements of conserving a received modification and of forming associations. These associations, the result of experience, we have styled dynamic, to distinguish them from natural or anatomical associations. Conservation is assured by nutrition, which is always recording because always renewed. The power of reproduction depends, above all, upon the circulation. Conservation and reproduction: all that is essential to memory is thus united with the fundamental conditions of life. The rest-consciousness, localization in the past-is only superadded. Psychical memory is nothing but the highest and most complex form of organic memory. If we limit investigation to that, as many psychologists have done, we condemn ourselves in advance to the pursuit of mere abstractions. These preliminary propositions established, we have classified and described the diseases of memory; and, as special observation is of greater service, more instructive and suggestive, than a general description, we have given of each morbid type clear and authentic examples. Having passed in review a long series of observations, we have sought to formulate certain general conclusions. In the

first place, we have shown the necessity of resolving memory into memories, the independence of each form being clearly established by morbid cases. We then demonstrated that dissolution of memory followed a law. Setting aside secondary disorders of brief duration which throw very little light upon those which are normal in their method of evolution, we have arrived at the following conclusions :

1. In cases of general dissolution of the memory, loss of recollections follows an invariable path: recent events, ideas in general, feelings, and acts.

2. In the best-known cases of partial dissolution (forgetfulness of signs), loss of recollection follows an invariable path: proper names, common nouns, adjectives and verbs, interjections, gestures.

3. In each of these classes the destructive process is identical. It is a regression from the new to the old, from the complex to the simple, from the voluntary to the automatic, from the least organized to the best organized.

4. The exactitude of the law of regression is verified in those rare cases where progressive dissolution of the memory is followed by recovery; recollections return in an inverse order to that in which they disappear.

5. This law of regression provides us with an

explanation for extraordinary revivification of certain recollections when the mind turns backward to conditions of existence that had apparently disappeared for ever.

6. We have founded this law upon this physiological principle: Degeneration first affects what has been most recently formed; and upon this psychological principle: The complex disappears before the simple, because it has not been repeated so often in experience.

Finally, our pathological study has led us to this general conclusion: Memory consists of a process of organization of variable stages between two extreme limits the new state, the organic registration.

INDEX.

Abercrombie, 181.

Apple, analysis of the memory of, 42.

Abstract concepts, memory of, 167. Automatic functions the last to dis-

Acoustic memory, 159, 163.
Adjectives, memory of, 168.

Adverbs, memory of, 168.
Agraphia, 152.

appear, 127.

Automatic movements, how

ac-

quired, 15; localizations become
automatic, 52.
Automatism, mental, 72.
Azam, Dr., 99, 101, 102, 104.

Baillarger, 118, 120.

Amnesia, 70; temporary, 71; peri-
odical, 71; progressive, 71; con-
genital, 71, 131; temporary, of
a destructive character, 79; in-
stances of, requiring re-education, | Bain, Alexander, 162.
82-94; total, 95; proportioned Beattie, Dr., 144.
to degree of organization, 95, Biological memory, 66.
172; physiological cause of, 96; Broadbent, 170.
complete, 97; movement of, gov- Broca, 170.
erned by natural forces, 122; par-
tial, meaning of, 138; of signs,
151; theory of amnesia of signs,
155, 160; progress of amnesia of
signs, 172.

Broca's convolution, motor residua
localized in, 164.
Bromide of potassium, 200.
Brown-Séquard, 96, 161.

Amnesia of signs, a disease of the Carpenter, 147, 181.

motor memory, 154.

Analogies of memory, 11, 12.

Anatomical cause of failing mem-
ory, 120.

Circulation of the blood and mem-

ory, 197.

Classification of diseases of mem-
ory, difficulty of, 70.

Anatomical lesion the cause of de- Clifford, 11.
mentia, 118.

Aphasia, 151; varieties of, 152;
chronic, 160.

Cœnæsthesis, 108-112; cause of
variations of the, 113; how to
determine forms of the, 113.
0 3

Complexity of the simplest mental | Epilepsy, and temporary amnesia,

Ego, nature of the, 98, 107-112; Granville, 82, 95.