3 o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



And it is not a little significant that the basis of such Memories ap- 

 pears capable of being laid at a very early period of life ; as in the two 

 following cases, of which the first is recorded by Dr. Abercrombie, 

 while the second was mentioned to me by the subject of it : 



" A lady, in the last stage of chronic disease, was carried from London to a 

 lodging in the country. There her infant daughter was taken to visit her, and, 

 after a short interview, carried back to town. The lady died a few days after, 

 and the daughter grew up without any recollection of her mother, till she was 

 of mature age. At this time she happened to be taken into the room in which 

 her mother died, without knowing it to have been so. She started on entering 

 it, and, when a friend who was with her asked the cause of her agitation, re- 

 plied, ' I have a distinct impression of having been in this room before, and that 

 a lady who lay in that corner, and seemed very ill, leaned over me and wept.' " 

 {Inquiries concerning the Intellectual Powers, fifth edition, p. 120.) 



" Several years ago, the Rev. S. Hansard, 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 gate-way, 

 he became conscious of a very vivid impression of having seen it before ; and he 

 ' seemed to himself to see,' not only the gate-way itself, but donkeys beneath 

 the arch, and people on the top of it. His conviction that he must have visited 

 the Castle on some former occasion, although he had neither the slightest re- 

 membrance of such a visit, nor any knowledge of having ever been in the neigh- 

 borhood 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 about 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 gate-way, where they would have been seen from be- 

 low, while he had been left on the ground with the attendants and donkeys. 

 This case is remarkable for the vividness of the Sensorial impression (it may be 

 worth mentioning that Mr. Hansard has a decidedly artistic temperament), and 

 for the reproduction of details which were not likely to have been brought up 

 in conversation, even if the subject of them had happened to hear the visit men- 

 tioned as an event of his childhood ; and of such mention he has no remem- 

 brance whatever." 



Now, there is very strong reason to believe that what is described 

 as a storing-up of Ideas in the Memory is the Psychological expres- 

 sion of Physical changes in the Cerebrum, by which Ideational states 

 are permanently registered or recorded ; so that the " traces " left by 

 them, although remaining so long outside the " sphere of conscious- 

 ness " as to have seemed non-existent, may be revived again in full 

 vividness under certain special conditions just as the invisible im- 

 pression left upon the sensitive paper of the Photographer is " devel- 

 oped " into a picture by the application of particular chemical sub- 

 stances. It must be freely admitted that we have at present no 

 certain knowledge of the precise mode in which this record is effected ; 

 but, looking at the manner in which the Sensori-motor apparatus, which 



