MEMORY.*
Nor very long ago, a well-known statesman of advanced age was quoted as possessing a remarkable memory,—he could recollect that he was the first to introduce the mixing of water with the brandy it was customary for the Eton boys of his day to drink on their river excursions. But this vivid recollection of our youthful days is the commonest feature of a good memory, and there are few who cannot recollect in- numerable scenes in the past with startling distinctness. As Dr. Ed ridge-Greenpoints out, it is only a provision of Nature that the young should be able to receive clear and strong impressions, for they have to learn everything at very short notice so as to avoid many dangers. This is the real explana- tion of a child's acuteness, his powers of mimicry, his swift and unerring judgment of character, and the unpleasantly direct remarks and inquiries he feels compelled to make. He wants to get at their motives, and does not care a rap for their feelings. Children are very accurate observers, as everybody knows, far more accurate than their elders. Memory does play with them strange tricks as it does with us. It is difficult to convince a child that it was not at such-and-such place; clearly proved alibi does not convince them as it does older people. Yet there are celebrated instances of impressions of great events received from actors in them, becoming so strong in some men, so bound up in their own identity, that nothing will convince them that they have not been spectators themselves. We all know the story of the Sovereign who firmly believed that he was present at the battle of Waterloo.
It seems to us that the tricks of memory, and the very annoying results obtained by the substitution of one impres- sion for the other, are more interesting than the so-called feats of memory, remarkable as these are. Some of the most absurd mistakes are due to the want of control exercised over the motor memory. We should never allow, says Dr. Edridge-Green, the limbs to learn certain movements without their being well under control of the will. Does anything ever cure a batsman of a bad style, a man of twitching his eyebrows, or a woman of the feminine inclination to scream at the sight Of a mouse P We have heard of a man who prefaced every remark he made by the words, 'Little dogs." Indeed, so apt does the motor memory—that memory which performs movements--become, that it performs such acts as writing without consciousness. Reporters fall asleep, but continue to report ; the tired rider sleeps in his saddle; women read aloud to invalids, and sleep at the same time; and the somnambu- list commits crimes which are as foreign to his nature as it is possible to imagine. A person writing a letter while conver-
_ • Memory and its Outtioation. By F. W. Edridge-Green, M.D., F.B.C.B. " The interhationed Bodentilto Series." London: 1115,1l.11 I nail and Cu. sation is going on interlards his sentences with fragments quite irrelevant to his subject, because the impressions of the sensory memory, as we must call it, are transmitted to the motor memory, and executed by it with secrecy and despatch, as it were, below the plane of consciousness. When the letter is read over and the sentences weighed one at a time, the writer is astonished at the nonsense he has written, the negatives he has omitted, and the apparent want of con- nection between his hand and his brain. Dr. Edridge- Green tells us of a lady who accepted a proposal when she intended to decline it, by the addition of one or two small words to her letter. She was so ashamed of the mistake that she never undeceived the man, and actually married him. Military discipline owes much to the direct connection established between the word of command and the muscular memory. So powerful is the instant connection that the soldier has been known to drop his dinner on hearing the command "Attention ! " Many a mutiny has been quelled through the involuntary remembrance of the muscles of cer- tain movements expected of them, and the immediate per- formance of these movements against the will of the soldier. The familiar voice, the habit of years, cannot be overcome but by a determined effort.. Again, how feeble is the recollec- tion of acts performed while the mind was absent. How common it is to forget whether one has rung the bell, or bolted the door before going to bed, or shaken hands with a person when leaving a party, or taken one's second cup of tea. It may be impossible even to recollect if you have had dinner. How few of us recollect what we have eaten. In this case the impression is so feeble that it cannot be revived. The most striking instance of the fleeting nature of impres- sions is that afforded by the face of a clock. Ask a room fall of people to draw a circle and put the figures of the dial on it, and probably not a single person will do it correctly. Yet how many thousands of times in a year has not each individual consulted a clock-face ? This is one of Dr. Edridge-Green'e tests.
Such instances of good memory as are usually quoted are those of scholars who can repeat large portions of the classics. The power of remembering written words is dis- tinct from that of remembering spoken words. A • relative of the writer knew a third of Pope's Iliad when he was six. One of the Drurys of Harrow repeated the Pharsalia of Lucan in a walk from Harrow to Eton. Useful as this faculty of spoken language is, it is too often developed at the expense of others even more important, each as the faculties of form and locality. The possessor of these undeveloped and untrained fa.culti.a retains such feeble impressions that he is utterly unable to recollect faces and places. The author cites the instance of a professional man who has sat opposite his own mother in an omnibus and failed to recognise her, and says he should not like to have to identify his wife in a Court of Law, and thinks it incredible that a witness can swear to a person. Fortunately, he is able to revive part of the impression, such as speech and personal peculiarities ; and in the case of names, which he has the same difficulties in remembering, he recalls facts with ease, and thus is able to revive the whole impression. He re- members facts with the greatest ease, provided he can put them in his own words,—the substance of a paragraph, for instance, but not the language. Where this gentleman would be if he were not assisted by his faculty of incident one shudders to think. It is a valuable example of the second law of remembrance,—that the revival of part of an impression tends to the revival of the whole. This is often noticed when one tries to find out particulars of a house, or s, tree, or a person from some one. It is probably with the very faculty one is deficient in that the other individual stamps his or her impressions on the memory. "How was she dressed P" you are asked. As your faculty of colour was in abeyance at the time, and you only used the faculty of form in remembering the face, you get no further. The faculty of form as regards the memory for faces is supposed to be a Royal gift, and it is easy to understand how a Sovereign has to rely on the recognition and correct judgment of a face just as much as a judge or a detective. Men of commanding per- sonality, as Napoleon, added not a little to the fascination they exercised over men by their instant recognition of a face and the recollection of such circumstantial details as occurred on the last occasion of their meeting the individual. It would be a commoner gift than it is if people realised what a pass- port to mankind's affection the ready recollection of a face is. But there remains the unfortunate drawback that a bad memory for names goes with a good memory for faces. An instance of this is quoted by Dr. Edridge-Green with the remedy. A gentleman who wished to remember the names of people, whose faces, by the way, be never forgot, simply wrote down their names. Once he had seen the written word he never forgot it The memory for spoken words is quite distinct, as has been said, from the memory for written words. A man possessed of the faculty of spoken language can learn by heart ad libitum. Dr. Leyden could repeat an Act of Parliament after hearing it read once, but said to some one who congratulated him on his memory that he had to repeat the whole thing if he wanted to get at any particular clause. Seneca could repeat two thousand words after having beard them once. Cyneas, whom Pyrrhus sent as
Ambassador to the Romans, learnt in a single day the names of the assembled people. The next day he saluted everybody by his own name. "In this example," says Dr. Edridge- Green, "there was an extraordinary memory for form as well." Each face had to be recollected.
Injury and alcoholic intoxication give us an unexpected insight into the nature of memory. It is related of an actor who became hopelessly drunk that his friends carried him to the theatre, and that on his reaching the stage he appeared to recover his senses and went through his part perfectly. At the end he collapsed into his alcoholic stupor and was carried home again, nor would he believe that he had fulfilled his en- gagement as usual. Miss Mary Anderson, on one occasion having played the fourth act of Romeo and Juliet, protested when her maid began to change her dress, and said she had yet to play the potion scene, though she had just acted in it with great applause. The actor and the actress, the reporter and the lady reader, the cavalry man and the somnambulist, all prove that the connection between the senses and the several special memories takes place below the plane of con- sciousness.
The perception of numbers has in one or two cases reached an astonishing development. That this is a distinct faculty is proved by the fact that Zerah Colburn certainly, and Bidder probably, could not do the commonest sum on paper. Yet Colburn could give the square or cube root of a number before it could be written down, discovered a prime number as soon as proposed, though no known rules for ascertaining the fact exist ; and having found the square root to twenty- seven places, of a number consisting of fifty-three figures, dictated it from memory twenty days after. He said he did not know how the answers came into his mind. In multi- plying two numbers and raising powers, his lips moved, and some lightning-like operation went on, but in extracting roots or factors he often gave answers immediately, and how he "spotted" a prime number no human being can conjecture. The example of a gentleman who was able to add up columns of pounds, shillings, and pence, and write down the totals with a mere glance at the page, enables us to understand the speed at which the faculty moves. This gentleman, by the way, found considerable difficulty in doing a rule of three sum,—that is, as Dr. Edridge-Green says, "any sum which required in the working out more than a perception and recollection of ideas of number."
Animals and birds have excellent memories, and extra- ordinarily accurate ones. The tortoise knows to a minute when his meal-time is near, and the curlew is noted for the punctuality with which he returns to the reappearing mud- flats. The elephant is celebrated for his powers of recognition and remembrance, and so is the parrot. Horses and dogs get very "cunning," as the expression is. We knew a dog that recognised its master's voice after a lapse of eight years, and we also knew a blind horse that remembered every gate on the farm !
Blindness suggests to us a remarkable instance of the sharp distinction between well-known faculties quoted by the author. Cheselden relates of a boy born blind, who gained sight by an operation, that he one day took up the cat, which of course he knew well by the touch, and having compared the two impres- sions, said: "So, puss, I shall know you another time." Dr. Critchett tells a similar story of a young girl who had always to assist one sense with the other. She would describe a pair of
scissors, the glisten, the colour, and shape correctly, but not till she had "instructed one sense through the medium of the other" by touching them did she recognise them, and laugh at her stupidity, as she called it, in not doing so before. Once she had associated the two impressions of any object, she never afterwards found it necessary to touch it.
Space forbids our discussing Dr. Edridge-Green's careful analysis of the psychology of colour, and his explanation of colour-blindness, or, indeed, to touch upon many fascinating and instructive anecdotes of special memories. Those who desire to cultivate their memories must study his last chapter in this admirably lucid and forcible analysis of one of the most marvellous features of the brain. It seems to us that carelessness is the real reason of bad memories. He scoffs at "unconscious cerebration," and declares that we can always find the reviving impression if we look for it. We must endorse this unreservedly. Only the other day the writer found it impossible to recollect the name of the training ship burnt years ago off Gravesend. Suddenly at the dinner-table the sight of the dachshund in some one's lap enabled him to recollect the name Warspite ' with a flash. The reviving impression, the writer is certain, was the resemblance of the fore-legs to the flappers of a seal and the associated idea of water.
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