O'SHEA — ASPECTS OF MENTAL ECONOMY. 59 



Jective functions, becomes baiting and unreliable. Who bas not 

 observed this in bis own daily experiences ? Ideas which one 

 bas firmly fixed in his bead, and usually bas in band when he 

 needs them, cannot now be readily summoned before conscious- 

 ness, and often keep out of reach altogether. One bas greater 

 difficulty, too, in making ideas fast now than on other occasions. 

 It seems as if the bewildering mechanism of the associative sys- 

 tem, regarded from the neural point of view, becomes in a meas- 

 ure thrown out of gear, one might say, in fatigue ; and in this 

 event, memory processes easy and natural in normal mentation 

 are so no longer. Under such circumstances one is apt to find 

 that making use of devices for recalling ideas that at other times 

 prove_ useful now are worthless. There is apparently an oblit- 

 eration of old mental pathways ; the energies of intellection are 

 not discharged in the customary grooves, and the thought life 

 then becomes to a greater or less degree either monoideistic or 

 atomistic. As Ribot says, 1 "Fatigue in every shape is fatal to 

 memory. The impressions received at such time are not fixed, 

 and the reproduction of them is very laborious and often impos- 

 sible. . . . When the normal conditions are restored 

 memory comes back again." 



It is not needful to linger over the significance of these facts 

 for the student. His success in the acquisition of learning; or 

 to put it in a way which would better represent the chief aim 

 of education, in building up a unified personality with interests 

 and activities adapting him most harmoniously to bis social and 

 natural environments, — his success in this depends so greatly 

 upon the power of retaining impressions and summoning them 

 forth when needed to guide action, that it would be impossible 

 to overestimate the mischief that circumstances can do which 

 militate against achievement of this sort. And then, regarding 

 the immediate demands made upon the university student in 

 bis class-room, it is evident that the incapacity to fix firmly and 

 in such a way as to be able to recall readily the ideas gained in 

 the different studies is a thing of serious mien, as those who 

 draw too heavily upon their energies in dissipation, in neglect 



1 Diseases of Memory, chap. V. 



