322 The Mnemonic Phenomenon 



it is well to repeat again, each elementary sensation or 

 representation would consist not so much in a specific 

 vibration of the nervous substance at this or that point 

 as in the production by the action of external stimuli 

 of a given specific nervous current. In this way the 

 memory of an elementary sensation or representation 

 would consist only in the reproduction, by the action of 

 causes now internal, of the same specific nervous current. 

 In other words the w r ay in which the hypothesis of 

 mnemonic elements or specific elementary accumulators 

 would conceive of the mnemonic phenomena is as 

 follows : 



A series of sounds or of words, for example a certain 

 melody, or some phrase of a discourse, when once it has 

 entered by the ear, we can imagine, produces a series 

 of nervous currents in the auditory nerve specifically 

 different from one another, just as in a telephone the 

 successive electric currents are specifically different from 

 one another (in this particular case different in intensity) 

 which the same series of sounds produces in the receptive 

 apparatus and later transmits along the wire. If then 

 one or several nerve centers, after receiving these spe- 

 cifically different currents, are capable of storing up these 

 specific energies, each distinct from the other, and to 

 reproduce them unaltered later at the moment of dis- 

 charge, and if, further, the discharge of each immediately 

 preceding specific energy and it alone is capable of pro- 

 ducing the liberation of the specific energy immediately 

 following, (and we have seen above that this is one 

 consequence of the hypothesis of specific elementary 

 accumulators), it will be in this way possible for the 

 same succession of different ideas or impressions to be 



