320 The Mnemonic Phenomenon 



faculty possessed by all living substance, it is in them 

 that we shall be able best to verify the laws which be- 

 come impressed upon this mnemonic faculty through the 

 conception that it is based upon the specific accumula- 

 tion and reproduction suggested above. And the most 

 important of these laws have just been briefly outlined 

 in the preceding chapters. 



Of the three elements of memory: the preservation 

 of certain states, their reproduction, and their localization 

 in the past, Ribot thinks that the first two alone are 

 necessary and characteristic. 233 We can note, that the 

 hypothesis of mnemonic elements permits us to conceive 

 of this preservation of certain states as an accumulation 

 of specific energy and their reproduction as the discharge 

 of that specific energy. 



"When we speak," writes Maudsley, "of a trace, or 

 vestige or residuum all we mean to imply is that an 

 effect is left behind in the organic element, a something 

 retained by it which disposes it to a similar functional 

 act; a disposition has been acquired which differentiates 

 it henceforth, although we have no reason to think that 

 there was any original specific difference between one 

 nerve cell and another." 234 This something which 

 leaves an impression after it in the nerve cell and which 

 disposes it to other similar functional acts will be to our 

 mind, a true and real material residue of substance 

 capable of reproducing the same functional current as 

 that by which it had been deposited. And the differ- 

 entiation of nerve cells, as indeed of all other somatic 

 cells, consists in the acquisition by each of them of a 



288 Ribot: Ibid. P. 2. 



234 Maudsley: The Physiology of Mind. Third edition. Lon- 

 don, Macmillan, 1876. P. 270. 



