SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



438 



2142. MEMORY ESSENTIAL TO ALL 

 MENTAL ACTION No Personal Identity, 

 fro Real Mind without Memory. Memory is 

 the most important function of the brain; 

 without it, life would be a blank. Our knowl- 

 edge is all based on memory. Every thought, 

 every action, our very conception of per- 

 sonal identity, is based on memory. Without 

 memory, all experience would be useless; 

 reasoning would be based on insufficient 

 data, and would be, therefore, fallacious. A 

 bad memory makes an otherwise able man 

 appear foolish; he looks his acquaintances 

 in the face without recognizing them; he 

 forgets his appointments, and tho he may 

 be well acquainted with the ordinary rules 

 of society, he forgets what to do under par- 

 ticular circumstances. ELDRIDGE-GBEEN 

 Memory and Its Cultivation, ch. 1, p. 1. 

 (A., 1900. \ 



2143. MEMORY, FREAKS OF Re- 

 tracing Links of Association. When a man 

 tries to retrace some " train of thought " 

 which has formerly passed through his mind, 

 but of which he only remembers that the 

 subject of it had been before him, he may 

 often recover it by following it out (as it 

 were) from the original starting-point; 

 when the whole, with its conclusions, will 

 often flash into the mind at once. 



Thus, the writer well recollects that, when 

 going to register the birth of one of his own 

 children, he found, when approaching the 

 office, that he had entirely forgotten the in- 

 tended name, which had been decided on 

 after a considerable amount of domestic dis- 

 cussion, and only brought it to his re- 

 membrance by " trying back " over the rea- 

 sons which had determined the one finally 

 selected. CARPENTER Mental Physiology, 

 ch. 10, p. 449. (A., 1900.) 



2144. MEMORY, LAPSE OF Shock 

 May Cause Questions of Veracity May Be 

 So Explained. Numerous cases are on rec- 

 ord of a person receiving some great shock, 

 and on recovery being found to have lost the 

 memory not only of the circumstance which 

 gave rise to the shock, but also of a certain 

 period of time directly preceding it, all the 

 events and circumstances which happened 

 during that time being forgotten, the last 

 circumstance remembered, preceding the 

 blank, often being some trivial incident. 

 . . . A young lady, having ascended an 

 iron staircase, became giddy and fell down, 

 being afterwards found insensible at the 

 bottom. After her recovery, she had no 

 recollection of the cause of her illness or the 

 place where she had fallen down. Five 

 years afterwards she happened to go to the 

 same place again and immediately the whole 

 flashed into her mind; she remembered be- 

 coming giddy and falling. ELDRIDGE-GREEN 

 Memory and Its Cultivation, pt. i, ch. 3, pp. 

 20-22. (A., 1900.) 



2145. Work Forgotten 



"by Author Experience of Sir Walter Scott. 

 One of the most curious examples of this 



limited loss of memory occurred in the case 

 of Sir Walter Scott, who, having produced 

 one of his best works [" The Bride of Lam- 

 mermoor "] under the pressure of severe ill- 

 ness, was afterwards found to have entirely 

 forgotten what he had thus constructed. 



"The book (says James Ballantyne) was 

 not only written, but published, before Mr. 

 Scott was able to rise from his bed, and he 

 assured me that when it was first put into 

 his hands in a complete shape, he did not 

 recollect one single incident, character, or 

 conversation it contained! He did not de- 

 sire me to understand, nor did I understand, 

 that his illness had erased from his memory 

 the original incidents of the story, with 

 which he had been acquainted from his boy- 

 hood. These remained rooted where they 

 had ever been ; or, to speak more explicitly, 

 he remembered the general facts of the ex- 

 istence of the father and mother, of the son 

 and daughter, of the rival lovers, of the com- 

 pulsory marriage, and the attack made by 

 the bride upon the hapless bridegroom, with 

 the general catastrophe of the whole. All 

 these things he recollected, just as he did 

 before he took to his bed; but he literally 

 recollected nothing else not a single char- 

 acter woven by the romancer, not one of the 

 many scenes and points of humor, nor any- 

 thing with which he was himself connected, 

 as the writer of the work." (" Life of Wal- 

 ter Scott," ch. 44.) CARPENTER Mental 

 Physiology, ch. 10, p. 443. (A., 1900.) 



2 1 46. MEMORY, MENDACITY OF 

 Experience Compels to Reluctant Doubt. 

 Yet, altho people in general are naturally 

 disposed to be very confident about matters 

 of recollection, reflective persons are pretty 

 sure to find out, sooner or later, that they 

 occasionally fall into errors of memory. It 

 is not the philosopher who first hints at the 

 mendacity of memory, but the " plain man " 

 who takes careful note of what really hap- 

 pens in the world of his personal experience. 

 Thus we hear persons quite innocent of 

 speculative doubt qualifying an assertion 

 made on personal recollection by the pro- 

 viso, " unless my memory has played me 

 false." And even less reflective persons, in- 

 cluding many who pride themselves on their 

 excellent memory, will, when sorely pressed, 

 make a grudging admission that they may, 

 after all, be in error. SULLY Illusions, ch. 

 10, p. 233. (A., 1897.) 



2147. MEMORY OF TOTALS "A 

 Woman's Reason." Students of any branch 

 of practical science, medicine, botany, con- 

 ch ology, etc., soon find that they are able to 

 recognize a specimen without going through 

 the processes which were at first necessary 

 to come to an opinion that is, they " see it 

 at a glance," as it is called. Now, if a per- 

 son always revives a whole as a whole, and 

 never splits it up into components, these 

 components will never occur to his mind. 

 . . . An example of this is found in what 

 is called "woman's reason" that is, she 

 feels sure that a certain thing is so and so 



