This noble faculty, the proudest attribute of mankind, justly called the
mother of the Muses, is subject to be impaired by various physical and
moral causes, while a similar agency can sometimes restore it to its
pristine energy, or develope its powers when sluggish and defective.
Memory may be considered as the history of the past chronicled in our
minds, to be consulted and called upon whenever circumstances stances or
the strange complication of human interests demand its powerful aid. Its
powers and nature widely differ, and these varieties depend upon
education, natural capacities, mode of living, and pursuits. Thus memory
has been divided into that faculty that applies to facts, and to that more
superficial quality that embraces a recollection of things, to which must
be added the memory of localities and words: "Lucullus habuit divinam
quamdam memoriam rerum, verborum majorem Hortensius," said Cicero.
It is on this division that Aristotle founded his belief that the brute
creation had not the faculty of reminiscence, although he allowed them to
possess memory. According to his doctrine, reminiscence is the power of
recollecting an object by means of a syllogistic chain of thought; an
intellectual link with which animals do not seem to be gifted. Their
memory appears solely to consist of the impressions received by the return
of circumstances of a similar kind. Thus, a horse that has started on a
certain part of a road will be apt to evince the same apprehension when
passing the same spot. This is an instinctive fear, but not the result of
calculation or the combination of former ideas. Reminiscence is the
revival of memory by reflection; in short, the recovery or recollection of
lost impressions.
The recollection of things or facts can alone bring forth a sound
judgment. It implies a regular co-ordination of ideas, a catenation of
reflections, in which circumstances are linked with each other. The chain
broken, no conclusion can be drawn. Newton was wont to lose the thread of
an important conversation when his mind was in search of an idea. This is
the reason why the society of the learned is seldom entertaining to the
generality of men. They are considered absent, while their brain is busily
employed in pursuits perhaps of great importance; they must therefore be
anything but agreeable to those who generally think through the medium of
other persons' brains.
The brain is considered to be the seat of memory. When it is injured,
remembrance is impaired; and, on the other hand, an accident has been
known to improve the recollective faculties. A man remarkable for his bad
memory fell from a considerable height upon his head; ever after he could
recollect the most trifling circumstance. The effects of different
maladies will also produce various results on this faculty. In some
instances names of persons and things are completely forgotten or
misapplied; at other times, words beginning with a vowel cannot be found.
Sudden fright and cold have produced the same effects. An elderly man fell
off his horse in crossing a ford in a winter's night; ever afterward he
could not bring to his recollection the names of his wife and children,
although he did not cease to recognise and love them as fondly as before
the accident. Cold has been at all times considered injurious to memory;
hence Paulus Aeginus called Oblivion the child of Cold.
In fevers, and a state of great debility, in a disordered condition of the
digestive functions, and various affections of the head, we generally find
that the attention cannot long be applied to any one subject or a
continued train of thoughts; all past circumstances are readily forgotten,
while passing occurrences are most acutely observed and felt, excepting in
cases of delirium, when we have the perception of surrounding objects or
receive an erroneous impression of their nature and agency. In many cases
of this nature, we find that conversation produces great excitement and
increases the evil, for the subject of such intercourse is generally
misconceived and distorted through the medium of a morbid conception,
while the past, the present, and the future are grouped in a confused and
most heterogeneous and incoherent jumble.
Philosophers have endeavoured to fix the seat of memory in various
portions of the brain. The ancients fancied that it was lodged in the
posterior part of the cranium; having observed that when persons
endeavoured to recollect any thing, they usually scratched the back part
of the head. The Arabian physicians entertained a similar belief.
Gratarola maintained that a great protuberance of the occiput indicated a
good memory. Gall places it above the orbitary cavity of the eye, and even
behind it. It has long been thought that persons with protuberant eyes had
quick recollections. The physical condition of the brain has also been
considered as materially affecting memory. What physiologists have called
a moist brain was looked upon as unfavourable to its development; and it
was therefore owing to the soft and pulpy condition of the cerebral organs
in young children that the difficulty of impressing anything upon their
minds arose; the same stupidity being observed in cases where water was
supposed to be lodged in the brain. While this humid state was considered
as injurious to memory, dryness of the organ was also esteemed an obstacle
of a similar nature; and in old age it is by this state of siccity that
failure in memory was attempted to be explained. This failure of memory as
age advances may, however, be explained in a much more rational manner.
Old people will bear in lively recollection the events that attended their
childhood, their youth, and manhood; it is only recent occurrences that
shed a transient impression on their minds. The cause of this may be
considered to arise from the extreme _impressionability_ that prevails in
early life, when every organ is prompt in responding to each call upon its
powers; when the charms of novelty tinge with a brighter, yet a more
lasting lustre, all our pleasurable sensations; when grief had not yet
wrung the young heart till its fibres became callous to future pangs, when
perfidy and ingratitude have shown us that all is vanity, and calm
philosophy has tutored our passions in the school of Adversity. Reason now
sits upon the judgment-seat, and all that we then can wonder at that is,
at any time we could have wondered at any thing. Why, then, are we to seek
for a material theory of the mind, when our daily experience shows us that
it is under the influence of so many moral agents?
We have, moreover, convincing proof that the brain may be materially
affected, without any deterioration of the mental faculties. Dr. Ferriar
mentions a man in whom the whole of the right hemisphere, that is, one
half of the brain, was found destroyed, but who retained all his faculties
till the very moment of his death. Diemerbrook states another case where
half a pound of matter was found in the substance of the brain. O'Hallaran
relates the history of a man who had suffered such an injury of the head,
that a large portion of his brain was removed on the right side; and
extensive suppuration having taken place, an immense quantity of pus,
mixed with large masses of the substance of the brain, was discharged at
each dressing, through the opening. This went on for seventeen days, and
it appears that nearly one half of the brain was thrown out, mixed with
the matter, yet the man retained all his intellectual faculties to the
very last moment of his dissolution, and through the whole course of the
disease, his mind maintained uniform tranquillity. I attended a soldier at
Braburne Lees, who had received a wound in the head during ball practice.
The ball remained in the brain, and during three weeks large masses of
brainular substance were brought away with pus. To the last day of his
life he would relate, with every circumstantial particular, the neglect of
the comrade by whom he had been wounded, and who fired while he was
running to the target to mark the shots. It is somewhat singular, but
suppuration of the brain is more offensive than the foulest ulcer, and it
is with great difficulty that the pestilential effluvia can be tolerated.
These cases plainly show that cerebral diseases have but little influence
on the manifestations of the mind.
Amongst the many curious doctrines that have been started, to account for
the operations of memory, some philosophers have compared it to the art of
engraving; pretending that on those subjects where it requires much time
and trouble to work an impression it was more durable, while it was only
traced in a superficial manner on those brains that were ever ready and
soft to receive this plastic influence. These several faculties they
therefore compared to bronze or marble, to butter and to wax. Descartes,
following up the phantasy, compared recollection to etching, and said that
the animal spirits, being passed over the lines previously traced, brought
them more powerfully to the mind; thus comparing the brain to the
varnished copper-plate over which the engraver passes his mordants.
Malebranche endeavoured to establish another doctrine, and compared our
cerebral organ to an instrument formed of a series of fibres, so arranged,
that when any recent emotion agitated one of these chords the others would
immediately be thrown into vibration, renewing a past chain of ideas. As
these chords became less flexible in old age, of course these vibrations
were more difficult to obtain. Recollection was also considered an
attribute of each molecule of the brain; and Bonnet endeavoured to count
how many hundred ideas each molecule was capable of holding during a long
life.
The controversies of learned psychologists on the relation of memory and
judgment, indeed on the analogies that exist between our several mental
faculties, have been as various as they are likely to prove interminable.
Without offending these illustrious controversionalists, we may endeavour
to enumerate these faculties, which, despite the ingenuity of theorists,
appear in a practical point of view to exercise a wonderful influence upon
each other. The first may be considered the faculty of _perception_,
assisted by that of _attention_, to which we are indebted for our _ideas_.
These are preserved and called into action from the rich stores of the
mind by _memory_, justly called by Cicero the guardian of the other
faculties. _Imagination_ is the faculty of the mind that represents the
images of remembered objects as if they were actually present.
_Abstraction_ forms general deductions from the foregoing faculties; while
_judgment_ compares and examines the analogies and relations of the ideas
of sense and of abstract notions. Finally, _reason_ draws inferences from
the comparisons of judgment.
It is from the combination and the workings of these wonderful powers that
_appetency_, _desires_, _aversions_, and _volition_ arise. _Appetency_
occasions _desires_, and these, when disappointed or satiated, inevitably
usher in aversions and antipathies; although, as we shall see in another
article, our antipathies are frequently instinctive, and not arising from
any combination of the faculties I have enumerated.
Dr. Gall has considered these mental faculties as fundamental; and in this
view he was certainly correct, since they may be considered the source
whence all other distinct capacities are probably formed by particular
habits of study and the nature of our pursuits, independently of those
specific capacities which appear to be innate, and, according to the
system of the phrenologists, organic. Every man possesses these
fundamental faculties in a greater or less degree, according to the
obtuseness or the energies of his mind; but it is absurd to conceive that
specific capacities can be brought into action without the agency of those
which are fundamental. Let us take the instinct to destroy life, the
sentiment of property, metaphysical sagacity, or poetic talent,--in short,
any one of Gall's various faculties; can we for one instant conceive that
they are not under the influence of _perception_, _memory_, _imagination_,
and _abstraction_, although they may not be properly ruled by _judgment_
and by _reason_? Instincts are equally under a similar influence, and are,
according to circumstances, regulated by judgment in the various modes of
life of animals. Phrenologists deny that instinct is a general faculty,
and assert that it is an inherent disposition to activity possessed by
every faculty, and that there are as many instincts as fundamental
faculties. This is a postulation by no means clear. Instinct is an
inherent disposition possessed by every animal, but not by every faculty.
It is a disposition dependent upon the combination of all the mental
faculties, according to the degree in which the animal may possess them:
the reminiscences of animals prove it. We have instanced the horse, who
endowed with the memory of locality, starts when passing by the same spot
where he had started before. But here the memory of facts, _memoria
realis_, and probably of words, _memoria verbalis_, are superadded to the
_memoria localis_. The horse recollects the tree, the carrion, the object
that startled him, whatever it might have been; but to this reminiscence
are associated the chiding, the punishment he received from his rider. If
this horse had possessed the faculties of _abstraction_, _judgment_, and
_reason_, he would not have started, to avoid a reiteration of punishment;
but he started under the impression of _perception_, _attention_, and
_memory_. Wherever there does not exist a combination of the faculties,
the intellectual ones may be considered imperfect. We certainly may have a
greater perception and memory of one subject than of others. Thus, a man
with a musical organisation will recollect any tune he may have heard,
though it may not have attracted the _attention_ of one who "hath no music
in his soul." We daily perceive different talents in children educated
together. This is, no doubt, a strong corroboration of the doctrine of
organic dispositions, which in reality no philosophic observer can deny;
but to assert that these several dispositions are not regulated by what
have been called the fundamental faculties, is, I apprehend, a position
that cannot well be maintained; and we may be warranted in the conclusion
that a particular faculty may be the result of the combined action of
several faculties, if not of all; for, whether a man be a poet or a
painter, a miser or a spendthrift, an affectionate father or an assassin,
every one of the mental faculties that I have enumerated will to a
certain extent be brought into action, however morbid that action may be.
All these disquisitions, however attractive they may be, when decked out
with the fascination of the fancy, are the mere wanderings of metaphysical
speculation, that never can be proved or refuted until we attain a
knowledge of the nature and quality of the perceptions which material
objects produce in the mind through the medium of the external senses. But
while some of these speculations are idle and harmless, others may be
fraught with danger, and occasion much misery to society. Let us for one
moment conceive the possibility of our resolves and actions being dictated
by a supposed phrenological knowledge,--a knowledge earnestly recommended
to statesmen, and indeed to mankind in general;--what would be the result?
A diplomatic bungler would be sent on an embassy, because a minister, or a
sovereign, with a phrenological map before him, may fancy that he displays
the faculty of circumspection, or the sense of things; and a chancellor of
the exchequer be found in some needy adventurer who possessed the organ of
relation of numbers!
I do not at all presume to invalidate the statements of Dr. Gall. The
profession is highly indebted to him for his accurate description of the
brain; and physiology must ever consider him as one of the brightest
ornaments of science: but I do maintain, that to recommend his conclusions
as a guide to society would be the most rash of visionary speculations;
and, to my personal knowledge, no man was ever more mistaken in his
estimate of the persons whom he met in society than the learned doctor
himself. Of this I had frequent opportunities of convincing myself, when I
met him in Paris in the circle of a Russian family which he daily visited.
If I could admit, with a late ingenious writer, "that phrenology teaches
the true nature of man, and that its importance in medicine, education,
jurisprudence, and everything relating to society and conduct must be at
once apparent," I should certainly agree with him in recommending its
study to parents, judges, and juries; but for the present, I am inclined
to believe that, although it may prove a most interesting and valuable
pursuit to the physiologist, it is by no means calculated to be the _vade
mecum_ of any liberal man.
The memory of various persons is amazing, and has been remarked in ancient
times with much surprise. Cyrus knew the name of every soldier in his
army. Mithridates, who had troops of twenty-two nations serving under his
banners, became a proficient in the language of each country. Cyneas,
sent on a mission to Rome by Pyrrhus, made himself acquainted in two days
with the names of all the senators and the principal citizens. Appius
Claudius and the Emperor Hadrian, according to Seneca, could recite two
thousand words in the order they had heard them, and afterwards repeat
them from the end to the beginning. Portius Latro could deliver all the
speeches he had hastily written without any study.
Esdras is stated by historians to have restored the sacred Hebrew volumes
by memory when they had been destroyed by the Chaldeans; and, according to
Eusebius, it is to his sole recollection that we are indebted for that
part of Holy Writ. St. Anthony, the Egyptian hermit, although he could not
read, knew the whole Scripture by heart: and St. Jerome mentions one
Neopolien, an illiterate soldier, who, anxious to enter into monastic
orders, learned to recite the works of all the fathers, and obtained the
name of the Living Dictionary of Christianity; while St. Antonius, the
Florentine, at the age of sixteen, could repeat all the Papal Bulls, the
Decrees of Councils, and the Canons of the Church, without missing a word.
Pope Clement V. owed his prodigious memory to a fall on his head. This
accident at first had impaired this faculty; but by dint of application he
endeavoured to recover its powers, and he succeeded so completely, that
Petrarch informs us he never forgot anything that he had read. John Pico
de la Mirandola, justly considered a prodigy, could maintain a thesis on
any subject,--_de omni re scibili_,--when a mere child; and when verses
were read to him, he could repeat them backward. Joseph Scaliger learned
his Homer in twenty-one days, and all the Latin poets in four months.
Haller mentions a German scholar, of the name of Muller, who could speak
twenty languages correctly. Our own literary annals record many instances
of this wonderful faculty.
To fortify this function when naturally weak, or to restore it to its
pristine energy when enfeebled by any peculiar circumstances, has been
long considered an essential study both by the philosopher and the
physician. Reduced to an art, this pursuit has received the name of
_Mnemonia_; and at various periods professors of it, more or less
distinguished by their success, have appeared in the several capitals of
Europe.
It has been justly observed, that remembrance is to the past what our
sensations are to the present, and our busy conjectures to futurity.
Memory gives a lesson to mankind, by stripping past events of their
_prestige_; thus enabling us to view what passes around us with a more
calm and philosophic resignation, while at the same time it tends to
protect us, in the career lying before us, against the many contingencies
that are likely to impede our path. Although it might appear desirable
that we could obliterate from the mind the painful scenes of our past
life, yet the wisdom of the Creator has deemed this faculty as necessary
to our happiness as our utter ignorance of our future destiny. For let us
mistake not by a hasty glance on this most important subject; the
remembrance of past sufferings is not always painful. On the contrary,
there is that which is holy in our past sorrows, that tends to produce a
calm, nay a pleasurable sensation of gratitude. St. Theresa beautifully
expressed this hallowed feeling when she exclaimed, "Where are those
blissful days when I felt so unhappy!" _Et olim meminisse juvabit._
Memory depends in a great measure on the vivacity with which these past
scenes are retraced--I may say re-transmitted to the mind, in ideal forms
"as palpable" as those that may be present. Therefore reminiscence may be
said to result from a connexion between ideas and images recalled into
being by a regular succession of expressive signs that the brute creation
do not possess. Those characteristic signs and images that are generally
circumstantial are co-ordained and classified in the mind, and tend
materially in weak memories to produce an artificial mode of recollecting
the past. This faculty is therefore matured by habit. A literary man,
whose library is properly classed, will find the book he wants in the
dark. The classification of his books is ever present to his mind. These
circumstantial signs are always remembered by a sort of association in our
ideas. Thus Descartes, who fondly loved a girl who squinted, was always
affected with strabismus when speaking of her. When we first see a person
in any particular costume, the individual is clad in the same apparel
whenever brought to our minds, even after a lapse of many years, when
fashion has banished even from general recollection the costume that
memory thus retraces individually. From these observations it has been
concluded that the most probable method of improving memory would be to
regulate these associations by a proper classification. One link of this
ideal chain will naturally lead to another. Many military men, to
recollect any number, will associate it with that of a regiment, so far at
least as the number of regiments extend; and the recollection of this
particular regiment will not only bring to his mind the number of the
house he seeks, but various other circumstances connected both with the
regiment and the number. For instance, I wish to recollect No. 87 in a
certain street. I had, when the number was mentioned to me, attached it to
the 87th regiment; and instantly I not only recollect that the 87th
regiment are the Irish Fusiliers, but that they took an eagle at Barossa,
where they distinguished themselves, and that the figure of that eagle is
borne upon all the appointments of the corps. At the same moment, with the
rapidity of lightning I recollect all the circumstances of the battle of
Barossa; the different conversations I may have had at various times with
the officers of the 87th; the town, the camp, the bivouac where I last had
met them. Thus are innumerable circumstances instantaneously converging in
a mental focus while simply seeking for the lodgings of an individual.
This may be called the memory of locality, since it is locality that
revives the recollection of it.
This train of thought has also been called the memory of association, and
associations have been referred to three classes:--