| All sensory impressions, somehow or other, leave their faint impress on
the waxen tablets of the mind. Few are or can be voluntarily recalled.
Just where and how memories are retained is a mystery. There are
theories that represent sensory experiences as actual physiological
"impressions" on the cells of the brain. They are, however, nothing but
theories, and the manner in which the brain, as the organ of the mind,
keeps its record of sensory experiences has never been discovered.
Microscopic anatomy has never reached the point where it could identify
a particular "idea" with any one "cell" or other part of the brain.
For us, the important question is not how, but how much; not the
manner in which, but the extent to which, sensory impressions are
preserved. Now, all the evidences indicate that absolutely every
impression received upon the sensorium is indelibly recorded in the
mind's substance. A few instances will serve to illustrate the
remarkable power of retention of the human mind.
Sir William Hamilton quotes the following from Coleridge's "Literaria
Biographia": "A young woman of four- or five-and-twenty, who could
neither read nor write, was seized with a nervous fever, during which,
according to the asseverations of all the priests and monks of the
neighborhood, she became 'possessed,' and, as it appeared, by a very
learned devil. She continued incessantly talking Latin, Greek and Hebrew
in very pompous tones, and with most distinct enunciation.
Sheets full of her ravings were taken down from her own mouth, and were found to
consist of sentences coherent and intelligible each for itself but with
little or no connection with each other. Of the Hebrew, a small portion
only could be traced to the Bible; the remainder seemed to be in the
Rabbinical dialect."
The case was investigated by a physician, who learned that the girl had
been a waif and had been taken in charge by a Protestant clergyman when
she was nine years old and brought up as his servant. This clergyman had
for years been in the habit of walking up and down a passage of his
house into which the kitchen door opened and at the same time reading to
himself in a loud voice from his favorite book. A considerable number of
these books were still in the possession of his niece, who told the
physician that her uncle had been a very learned man and an accomplished
student of Hebrew.
Among the books were found a collection of Rabbinical
writings, together with several of the Greek and Latin fathers; and the
physician succeeded in identifying so many passages in these books with
those taken down at the bed-side of the young woman that there could be
no doubt as to the true origin of her learned ravings.
Now, the striking feature of all this, it will be observed, is the fact
that the subject was an illiterate servant-girl to whom the Greek, Latin
and Hebrew quotations were utterly unintelligible, that normally she
had no recollection of them, that she had no idea of their meaning,
and finally that they had been impressed upon her mind without her
knowledge while she was engaged in her duties in her master's kitchen.
Several cases are reported by Dr. Abercrombie, and quoted by Professor
Hyslop, in which mental impressions long since forgotten beyond the
power of voluntary recall have been revived by the shock of accident or
disease. "A man," he says, "mentioned by Mr. Abernethy, had been born in
France, but had spent the greater part of his life in England, and, for
many years, had entirely lost the habit of speaking French. But when
under the care of Mr. Abernethy, on account of the effects of an injury
to the head, he always spoke French."
"A similar case occurred in St. Thomas Hospital, of a man who was in a
state of stupor in consequence of an injury to the head. On his partial
recovery he spoke a language which nobody in the hospital understood but
which was soon ascertained to be Welsh. It was then discovered that he
had been thirty years absent from Wales, and, before the accident, had
entirely forgotten his native language.
"A lady mentioned by Dr. Pritchard, when in a state of delirium, spoke a
language which nobody about her understood, but which was afterward
discovered to be Welsh. None of her friends could form any conception of
the manner in which she had become acquainted with that language; but,
after much inquiry, it was discovered that in her childhood she had a
nurse, a native of a district on the coast of Brittany, the dialect of
which is closely analogous to Welsh.
The lady at that time learned a good deal of this dialect but had entirely forgotten it for many years
before this attack of fever."
BY
WARREN HILTON, A.B., L.L.B.
FOUNDER OF THE SOCIETY OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
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Dr. Carpenter relates the following incident in his "Mental Physiology":
"Several years ago, the Rev. S. Mansard, now rector of Bethnal Green,
was doing clerical duty for a time at Hurstmonceaux, in Sussex; and
while there he one day went over with a party of friends to Pevensey
Castle, which he did not remember to have ever previously visited. As he
approached the gateway he became conscious of a very vivid impression
of having seen it before; and he 'seemed to himself to see' not only the
gateway itself, but donkeys beneath the arch and people on top of it.
His conviction that he must have visited the castle on some former
occasion--although he had neither the slightest remembrance of such a
visit nor any knowledge of having ever been in the neighborhood
previously to his residence at Hurstmonceaux--made him inquire from his
mother if she could throw any light on the matter. She at once informed
him that being in that part of the country, when he was but eighteen
months old, she had gone over with a large party and had taken him in
the pannier of a donkey; that the elders of the party, having brought
lunch with them, had eaten it on the roof of the gateway, where they
would have been seen from below, whilst he had been left on the ground
with the attendants and donkeys."
"An Italian gentleman," says Dr. Rush, of Philadelphia, "who died of
yellow fever in New York, in the beginning of his illness spoke English,
in the middle of it French, but on the day of his death only Italian."
Striking as these instances are, they are not unusual. Everyone on
reflection can supply similar instances. Who among us has not at one
time or another been impressed with a mysterious feeling of having at
some time in the past gone through the identical experience which he is
living now?
On such occasions the sense of familiarity is sometimes so persistent as
to fill one with a strange feeling of the supernatural and to incline
our minds to the belief in a reincarnation.
The "flash of inspiration" which, for the lawyer, solves a novel legal
issue arising in the trial of a case, or, for the surgeon, sees him
successfully through the emergencies of a delicate operation, has its
origin in the forgotten learning of past experience and study. |
