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in which a cicatrix in a child's finger grows with the growth 

 of the body, proves, as has been shown by Paget, that the 

 organic element of the part does not forget the impression 

 it has received. What has been said about the different 

 nervous centres of the body demonstrates the existence of 

 a memory in the nerve-cells diffused through the heart and 

 the intestines, in those of the spinal cord, in the cells of the 

 motor ganglia, and in the cells of the cortical substance of 

 the cerebral hemispheres." Is memory, then, in its indi- 

 vidual form hereditary ? The facts in the affirmative are 

 comparatively few, for obvious reasons, and principally 

 because the study of mental heredity has hitherto been 

 sadly neglected. There can, however, be no doubt that the 

 heredity of the memory is implied in physiological heredity, 

 as what is true of part must also be true of the whole. Heredi- 

 tary idiocy is characterised by excessive weakness of memory, 

 " idiots generally recollecting only what concerns their tastes, 

 their propensities, their passions. But as this is doubtless the 

 result of the feebleness of their sensorial impressions, this 

 heredity is the effect of a more general hereditary transmis- 

 sion." Even history affords but few marked instances, but 

 there can be no doubt that artists, whether pictorial or 

 musical, must inherit, respectively, a good memory for forms 

 and colours, and for sounds ; and as a matter of fact these 

 have been transmitted through four or five consecutive 

 generations. " It must be admitted," says Ribot, " that 

 there are not many facts to show the heredity of memory ; 

 but the conclusion is not thereby justified that this form of 

 heredity is rarer than others. The opposite opinion is still 

 tenable, and the lack of evidences can be explained. 

 Memory, with all its undoubted usefulness, plays in human 

 life, and consequently in history, only a secondary and 



