THE ASSOCIATION CENTERS OF FLECHSIG 671 



Since the memory always suffers to a great extent from destruction of the 

 association centers, the nervous elements with which the ability to recall sense 

 impressions is connected must unquestionably be sought mainly in those cen- 

 ters. The ganglion cells play the chief role in this because, so far as our 

 experience yet goes, they alone of all the nervous elements are able to store 

 up impulses and to become charged with energy. Without knowing anything 

 about it, we may suppose that the number of nerve elements which are active 

 in the simplest event of consciousness must be very great. 



What we do know with certainty is, that tokens of memory (memory pic- 

 tures) which are imprinted, so to speak, in the brain elements are more or 

 less firmly related to each other ; and the basis of this organic unity of memory 

 lies in the systematic arrangement of the numberless disparate constituents 

 of its physical groundwork. 



The question as to what are the physical forces which bring the memory 

 pictures back to consciousness is one of particular interest. We commonly 

 attribute the greatest importance to our sense impressions, impressions of the 

 outer world, and, as a matter of fact, throughout our waking hours, these 

 are all the time rousing memory tokens. 



But a second important factor comes in here. External impressions act 

 to rouse the imagination or a reflective train of thought most potently if 

 they at the same time rouse certain feelings or emotional impulses. Anything 

 that pleases not only stimulates but also quickens the imagination. But 

 hunger, thirst, sexual passion and many other bodily sensations have a direct 

 summoning influence on all agreeable ideas connected with them. We have 

 then in the bodily feelings and general bodily spirits, which are the real 

 primary forces of the imagination, a second regulating factor upon which 

 rests a very substantial and by no means the most sordid part of art and 

 poetry. 



Primarily the senses appear to be only subordinate helps to the impulses 

 coming from within, but they provide us a store of material for the expression 

 of our feelings. The artistic perfection of the pictures which we create with 

 our minds will depend in large part upon the care with which this preparatory 

 work is done, upon the sharpness of our grasp of the actual ; and the imagina- 

 tion will work to a given end the more effectively, the more this sensory 

 material is allowed to appeal to our feelings, and so to take on tokens by 

 which it can be recalled to mind. 



But even in the most magnificent creations of the imagination we have 

 to do to a certain extent with simple mechanical processes. Here again con- 

 ducting pathways, nerve fibers, which connect the mechanisms concerned in 

 the production of bodily feelings with the central workshops of organized 

 memory, namely the association centers, have a part to play. And since the 

 nerves which serve to bring the sensory impulses to consciousness push through 

 to the cortex and enter the sensory centers, we have converging toward the 

 same cortical regions nerve paths which make us aware of the treasures and 

 charms of the outer world, and those which bring to consciousness the every- 

 day needs of the body in the form of desires. Both without distinction act 

 from these their highest points of attack upon the motor mechanisms on the 

 one hand and upon the intellectual centers on the other. 



