MEMORY

AND ITS CULTIVATION

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

WHAT is MEMORY? It is the process by means of which impressions of the external world and ideas are retained for use on future occasions.

Memory is the most important function of the brain; without it life would be a blank. Our knowledge is all based on memory. Every thought, every action, our very conception of personal identity, is based on memory. Without memory, all experience

would be useless; reasoning would be based on insufficient data, and would be, therefore, fallacious. A bad memory makes an otherwise able man appear foolish 1; he looks his acquaintances in the face without recognising them; he forgets his appointments; and though he may be well acquainted with the ordinary rules of society, he forgets what to do under particular circum

stances.

Memory must be clearly distinguished from remembrance and recollection. Recollection is the power of

voluntarily recalling impressions. Remembrance is the term applied when the process is involuntary. Memory is the innate power to have an impression recalled if a proper stimulus be applied.

Who has not, when revisiting the scenes of early childhood, had circumstances come back to his mind with a vividness which has astonished him? Many cases have been recorded, of men who have been saved from drowning, who have seen all the incidents of their past life, as it were in a panorama, and with the minutest details. It is clear that these events could not have been forgotten in the true sense of the word, for if they had been, no stimulus, however strong, would have been able to bring them before the consciousness. In this way the circle of remembrance can be widened; an impression, which cannot be revived by a weak stimulus, will at once occur to the mind should one of the elements of a strong association be presented. From this it will be seen how little is really forgotten, the most trivial incidents being remembered when the same circumstance occurs again with exactly similar surroundings.

Many psychologists hold the view that when anything is known so well as to become an integral part of ourselves, then there is no memory in the process of remembrance. They say, 'we do not remember that a stone is hard.' It seems to me that if we forgot that important circumstance, we should be reminded of it in a most disagreeable way on striking against one.

How little do men think, when they say that 'they cannot remember anything,' how much they really do remember! A person's knowledge of himself, as a being, is based on memory; he would not be able to

recognise his own reflection in a mirror if it were not for memory. The extent of this faculty is clearly shown under circumstances in which it is temporarily or permanently in abeyance, as in some pathological conditions. There is no process of the mind which is not primarily based on memory. Even in listening to an ordinary conversation, memory is required; for, in its absence, we should forget the first portion of a sentence before we had heard the conclusion.

If it were not for memory, our native tongue would be as unintelligible as a foreign language is to most persons. We feel that there is a distinct difference between easy remembrance and attempted recollection. In the process of remembrance much less nervous force is expended: there is very little mental labour involved, in reading a novel or watching a theatrical performance, but the number of previous impressions which are revived, is enormous. How different it is when we try to recollect a name which has been forgotten; we feel that the mental labour is comparatively severe.

Then the most superficial observer must have noticed that persons differ in what they remember; one remembers tunes, but forgets words; another remembers words, but forgets shapes, and so on.

(The word 'forget' is used here and throughout the following pages, not as having the meaning of an impression having become irretrievably lost, but that the power of recalling it has become temporarily or permanently lost.)

In the following pages I shall demonstrate that memory is a definite faculty, and has its seat in the basal ganglia of the brain, separate from, but associated with, all the other faculties of the mind.

CHAPTER II

THE DIVISIONS OF MEMORY

MEMORY is primarily divided into sensory and motor, corresponding to the sensory and motor nerves.

In the centre for sensory memory all impressions received through the nerves of sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and all other impressions conveyed by the sensory nerves to the mind, are stored up. The memory of all ideas, emotions, and other processes of the mind arising out of the sensory memory impressions, also forms part of the sensory memory.

These primary divisions of memory each contain numerous subdivisions depending upon the fact that the faculties of the mind vary in individuals, it being very rare to find two persons with exactly similar characters. As the hereditary tendencies, education, and surroundings, have the effect of causing each person to have his special desires and pursuits, he has in conformity with them special memories, which are developed by special intensification of certain portions of the general memory. These special memories can be arranged in groups, as the special memory for forms, the special memory for tunes, or the special memory for articulate sounds.

The motor memory is the memory that is required