66 



DISCOVERY 



results. These nu-n art- treasures. They sliould re- 

 ceive more recognition and help than they do. Nothing 

 is too good for them. Scientilic work cannot be done 

 in a garret by the light of a candle. It needs apparatus 

 and money. Money must therefore be forthcoming if 

 research work in pure science is to continue, and, if 

 it be forthcoming, whether from the Government or 

 privately from men of wealth, it should be devoted to 

 the cause for which it was given, and not diverted 

 into other channels, as Professor Soddy argues so 

 much of it has been in the past. 



« « • * « 



Einstein's theory of relativity has come to stay, 

 so, however complex and incoherent it may appear 

 to us at present, we must, we suppose, try to grasp 

 what it is all about. In recent numbers of Nature 

 this subject has been dealt with by many writers 

 and correspondents, and certainly it has been made 

 more understandable than it was in the original ac- 

 counts. A good description of the theory was given 

 by Professor Lindemann of Oxford in a recent number 

 of the Times Educational Supplement. An English 

 translation of the book by Professor Einstein himself 

 is announced for the spring. 



***** 



Professor Pear's article in the first number on the 

 Psychology of Dreams has aroused great interest. 

 We have decided, therefore, to d^al from time to time 

 with other branches of psychology. This is now an 

 experimental science which, although it is of com- 

 paratively recent date, is already of great importance, 

 and also of great human interest. Its main foundations 

 are well and truly laid, and it appears to have a very 

 promising future. During the war psychology was 

 brought into great prominence, because of the extra- 

 ordinarily good work done by its workers in the treat- 

 ment of nervous disorders in soldiers resulting from 

 the war. 



* * * * * 



We wonder if it is reahsed, as it ought to be, how 

 much good original poetry and prose in our own 

 language is being written at the present time. With 

 peace has come a large output of imaginative writing, 

 the], best of which should not be passed over or left 

 unread until the critics of the next generation tell 

 those of us who are then alive what great fellows 

 contemporary writers are. The best of the literary 

 weeklies and monthlies are very much alive, and for 

 those who hav^e not time to wade through everything 

 that is published, but time only to read what is worth 

 while, they act as very helpful and pleasant guides. 

 To discover the best writers of to-day, and to re- 

 discover the best of the literature of the past, that 

 surely is a good piece of work we can set ourselves 

 to do. 



Lapsed Memories 



By P. B. Ballard, M.A., D.Lit. 



Inspector o) Schools, London Countg Council 



Within the last decade psychological interest has been 

 transferred from remembering to forgetting. The 

 psychologist is now less concerned in explaining how 

 we remember than in guessing how we forget ; and 

 especially in guessing what it is we have forgotten. 

 For it is now a well-established theory that forgetting 

 — or, rather, a certain kind of forgetting — is the cause 

 of serious nervous disorders, such as hysteria, and 

 certain forms of incipient insanity. The proof Hes in 

 the fact that when the patient ceases to forget he 

 ceases to suffer : with restored memory comes restored 

 health. This simple truth came into marked promi- 

 nence during the war. Shell-shock, with its distressing 

 symptoms, is as a rule traceable to forgetfulness. The 

 sufferer cannot, for all his efforts, recall what happened 

 in those moments of peril and terror that broke down 

 his nerve ; nor, indeed, the events that immediately 

 followed. And when, under hypnotic treatment, or 

 by that more tedious but more efficacious mode of 

 probing the mind known as psycho-analysis, he is 

 enabled to retrieve his lapsed memories, the symptoms 

 nearly always disappear — often with surprising sud- 

 denness. When they still persist, in large measure or 

 small, it is generally found that the root of the trouble 

 lies still further down, in some earUer forgetfulness 

 that had already weakened the resistance of his nerves. 

 Here we have a kind of forgetting which brings 

 suffering in its train, and demands, in the interests of 

 human happiness, a careful study. It is clear that, 

 as a rule, forgetting is a perfectly harmless process ; 

 nay, even necessary and beneficent. To rid the mind 

 of lumber is a wholesome thing to do ; and to rid it 

 of learning does no great harm. There is no reason 

 to think that those of us who have forgotten some of 

 the things we learnt at school are, from the point of 

 view of health, any the worse for our forgetting ; it is 

 certain that efficient thinking depends on a judicious 

 forgetting — on a leaving out of the unimportant and 

 the irrelevant. Physiologically speaking, memory 

 depends on a modification of the nervous system : 

 every experience leaves a trace there, and that trace 

 is the basis and guarantee of its recall. But as time 

 passes since their last re\'ival these traces gradually 

 fade away, and the memories they underUe get more 

 and more difficult to call back to consciousness. Many 

 of them, indeed most of them, never come back at 

 all. That is the normal and healthy process of obli- 

 viscence — a gradual passing of our experiences into 

 obUvion — a process mainly dependent on the time 

 that lapses since they were part of the actual thinking 



