J-^N-i-AEY 2, 1888.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



53 



■who when hearing me deal with a problem in Euclid would 

 send me back to relearn my lesson if I called a triangle 

 A C B instead of A B C as the book showed it. 



^ye need not then either despair of our mental powers 

 when we hear of marvellous feats of memory, or think that 

 our minds are failing because with advancing years our 

 memory may occasionally play us false. Memory, as Dr. 

 Diordat, of Montpelier, long since pointed out, and as hun- 

 dreds of facts show, is rather the offspring of the vital force 

 than of the intellectual principle ; and it is not surprising 

 if in old age, when the vital force diminishes, memory should 

 sometimes fail, even while the intellectual power preserves 

 its full integrity. As for marvellous feats of memory, 

 though they certainly indicate possibilities of future develop- 

 ments which would greatly increase man's grasp over 

 mental problems, they need no more dL^courage those who 

 feel incapable of any achievements in this line than the 

 mental powers of Blind Tom should cause those who see his 

 performances to despair because they can never hope to do 

 the like. 



The examples themselves which most strikingly display 

 the capacity of special brains for remembering words and 

 syllables show also how little this capacity has to do with 

 intellectual power— some of them indeed seem almost to 

 suggest that a very keen memory may be a mark of disease. 

 That excessive keenness of memory may result from a 

 diseased cerebral action is indeed certain ; but fortunately 

 we are not obliged to regard this fact as giving any unplea"- 

 sant significance to exceptionally good powers of remem- 

 brance. If foolish, or even idiotic persons, or persons in the 

 delirium of fever, have manifested remarkable memories, 

 men like :Macaulay, Prescott, Euler, and others have had 

 marvellous memoiies without being feeble-minded and 

 without the aid of disease. 



Pepys tells us of an Indian who could repeat a long 

 passage in Greek or Hebrew after it had been recited to 

 him only once, though he was ignorant of either language. 

 This man would doubtless have been able to repeat (so far 

 as his vocal organs would permit him to imitate the sounds) 

 the song of a nightingale or a lark, through all its ever- 

 varying passages, during ten or twenty minutes, and with 

 as much understanding of its significance as of the meaning 

 of the Greek and Latin words he recited so glilily. We cei° 

 tainly need not envy that particular " poor Indian " his 

 "untutored mind," though as certainly the power he 

 possessed would be of immense value to a philosopher. 



If any one is disposed to believe that perhaps after all 

 that Indian may have been a man of powerful understand- 

 ing, a case of even more wonderful recollection of mere 

 sounds will at least dispose of the idea that the man's pecu- 

 liarly retentive memory proved mental power. Coleridge 

 relates, in his '' Literaria Biogniphia," that in a Roman 

 Catholic town in Germany a young woman who could 

 neither read nor write was seized with a fever, during which, 

 according to the 'priests, she was posses^sed by a polyglot 

 devil. For she talked Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, besides 

 uttering sounds which, though not understood by her 

 hearers, had doubtless meaning, but belonged to languages 

 unknown to them. " Whole sheets of her ravings were 

 written out," says Coleridge, " and were found to con.sist of 

 sentences intelligible in themselves, but having slight con- 

 nection with each other." It appeared rather" inconsistent 

 with the theory of demoniac possession that .some of these 

 sentences were Biblical ; but as it is proverbial that the 

 devil can quote Scripture for his purpose, this evidence 

 might not have availed to save the girl from such rough 

 treatment for her -'possession" as would probably have 

 served very ill for her fever. Fortunatelj", a physician, who, 

 being sceptically inclined, was disposed to question the 



theory of a polyglot spirit, " determined to trace back the 

 girl's history. After much trouble he discovered that at 

 the age of nine she had been charitably taken bv an old 

 Protestant pastor, a great Hebrew scholar, in whose house 

 she lived till his death. On further inquiry it appeared to 

 be the old man's custom for years to walk up and down a 

 passage of his house into which the kitchen opened, and 

 to read to himself in a loud voice out of his books. The 

 books were ransacked, and among them were found several 

 of the Greek and Latin fathers, together with a collection of 

 Rabbinical writings. In these works so many of the pa.s- 

 sages taken down at the young woman's bedside were 

 identified, that there could be no reasonable doubt as to their 

 source." 



If the girl had remembeied these passages in a normal 

 way, and had merely uttered them during her sickness, the 

 story would have been remarkable enough, since she was 

 altogether uneducated. But, as a matter of fact, she re- 

 membered none of thorn in health, either before or after her 

 sickness. It was doubtless the activity of the circulation 

 during the access of fever which brought out as it were the 

 impressions of sounds really recorded in the brain, but so 

 lightly that except during such situation she remained 

 unconscious even of their existence. 



A case cited by Dr. Abercrombie confirms the suggestive 

 theory that the stimulus which fever gives to the circulation 

 (sign of disease though it is) may bring dormant mental im- 

 pressions into temporary activity. A boy at the age of 

 four had undergone the operation of the trepan, being at 

 the time in a stupor from a severe fracture of the skull. 

 After his recovery he retained no recollection eil;her of the 

 accident or of the operation. But at the age of fifteen, 

 during an attack of fever, he gave his mother an account of 

 the operation, describing the persons who were present, and 

 even remembering details of their dress and other minule 

 particulars. 



Even an accident may stimulate the memory in such 

 sort as to recall long-forgotten neutral impressions, and so 

 to convey that the mind is regularly retentive. Dr. Aber- 

 crombie relates a case of this kind which suggests many 

 perplexing problems in regard to memory. A ruan who had 

 been completely stunned by a blow on the head remained 

 still partially out of bis mind when he had recovered from 

 the first effects of the blow. In his unconscious ^tate he 

 spoke a language which nobody in the London hospital to 

 which he bad been removed could understand, but which 

 was presently found to be Welsh. It was subsequently dis- 

 covered that, though Welsh liy birth, he had been thirty 

 years away from Wales when the accident occui'red, and had 

 quite forgotten his native tongue. On his restoration to full 

 consciousness he lost his Welsh again completely, but 

 recovered his English. 



The effects of an accident — in destroying temporarily, or, 

 .so far as it appears, wholly — all neutral impressions received 

 within certain intervals, are sometimes curious enough. 

 Thus Dr. Carpenter mentions the case of a friend of his— a 

 clergj'man — who was pitched out of a phaeton, and received 

 a severe concussion of the brain. On recovering he found 

 that he had forgotten all that had happened, not only when 

 the accident actually took place, but during some previous 

 time. The last thing he remembered was that he had met 

 an acquaintance on the road just about two miles from the 

 accident. 



An access of fever may produce, as we have seen, a local 

 disturbance of brain functions. It is further worthy of 

 notice also that the recollection a man has of events preced- 

 ing intoxication is apt to be similarly limited in a definite 

 but not readily explicable manner. 



I remember a Cambridge man who, though not given to 



