439 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Memory 

 Mermaid 



" because it is " ; thus a critic might feel 

 utterly unable to say why a certain picture 

 was a forgery, but feel perfectly sure in his 

 own mind that it was not genuine, the rea- 

 son being that the picture in question did 

 not possess the whole of the qualities of one 



painted by , and so would not revive 



the requisite impression. ELDRIDGE-GBEEN 

 Memory and Its Cultivation, pt. ii, p. 257. 

 (A., 1900.) 



2148. MEMORY, PECULIARITIES OF 

 Seeming Anomalies Psychology Seeks to 

 Explain Conditions of Its Action. For why 

 should this absolute God-given faculty [of 

 memory] retain so much better the events 

 of yesterday than those of last year, and, 

 best of all, those of an hour ago? Why, 

 again, in old age should its grasp of child- 

 hood's events seem firmest? Why should 

 illness and exhaustion enfeeble it? Why 

 should repeating an experience strengthen 

 our recollection of it? Why should drugs, 

 fevers, asphyxia, and excitement resuscitate 

 things long since forgotten? If we content 

 ourselves with merely affirming that the 

 faculty of memory is so peculiarly consti- 

 tuted by Nature as to exhibit just these 

 oddities, we seem little the better for having 

 invoked it, for our explanation becomes as 

 complicated as that of the crude facts with 

 which we started. Moreover there is some- 

 thing grotesque and irrational in the sup- 

 position that the soul is equipped with ele- 

 mentary powers of such an ingeniously in- 

 tricate sort. Why should our memory cling 

 more easily to the near than the remote? 

 Why should it lose its grasp of proper 

 sooner than of abstract names? Such pe- 

 culiarities seem quite fantastic; and might, 

 for aught we can see a priori, be the precise 

 opposites of what they are. Evidently, then, 

 the faculty does not exist absolutely, but 

 works under conditions; and the quest of 

 the conditions becomes the psychologist's 

 most interesting task. JAMES Psychology, 

 vol. i, ch. 1, p. 2. (H. H. & Co., 1899.) 



2149. MEMORY, REVIVAL OF 



Childhood's Early Impression Recalled. 

 [The following incident was personally men- 

 tioned to the writer by the subject of it:] 

 Several years ago, the Rev. S. Hansard, 

 now rector of Bethnal Green, was doing 

 clerical duty for a time at Hurstmonceaux, 

 in Sussex ; and while there he one day went 

 over with a party of friends to Pevensey 

 Castle, which he did not remember to have 

 ever previously visited. As he approached 

 the gateway, he became conscious of a very 

 vivid impression of having seen it before; 

 and he " seemed to himself to see " not only 

 the gateway itself, but donkeys beneath the 

 arch, and people on the top of it. His con- 

 viction that he must have visited the castle 

 on some former occasion altho he had 

 neither the slightest remembrance of such a 

 visit, nor any knowledge of having ever been 

 in the neighborhood previously to his resi- 

 dence at Hurstmonceaux made him inquire 

 from his mother if she could throw any 



light on the matter. She at once informed 

 him that, being in that part of the country 

 when he was about eighteen months old, she 

 had gone over with a large party and had 

 taken him in the pannier of a donkey ; that 

 the elders of the party, having brought 

 lunch with them, had eaten it on the roof of 

 the gateway where they would have been 

 seen from below, w r hilst he had been left on 

 the ground with the attendants and don- 

 keys. This case is remarkable for the vivid- 

 ness of the sensorial impression (it may be 

 worth mentioning that Mr. Hansard has a 

 decidedly artistic temperament ) , and for the 

 reproduction of details which were net like- 

 ly to have been brought up in conversation, 

 even if he had happened to hear the visit 

 itself mentioned as an event of his child- 

 hood, and of such mention he has no re- 

 membrance whatever. CARPENTER Mental 

 Physiology, ch. 10, p. 430. (A., 1900.) 



2150. MEMORY, UNCONSCIOUS 

 Automatic Action Gains in Rapidity and 

 Ease Separate Volitions Involve Delay 

 Language and Music. The more sure and 

 perfect, indeed, memory becomes, the more 

 unconscious it becomes; and, when an idea 

 or mental state has been completely organ- 

 ized, it is revived without consciousness, and 

 takes its part automatically in our mental 

 operations, just as an habitual movement 

 does in our bodily activity. We perceive in 

 operation here the same law of organization 

 of conscious acquisitions as unconscious 

 power which we observed in the functions 

 of the lower nerve-centers. A child, while 

 learning to speak or read, has to remember 

 the meaning of each word, [and] must tedi- 

 ously exercise its memory; but which of us 

 finds it necessary to remember the meanings 

 of the common words which we are daily 

 using, as we must do those of a foreign lan- 

 guage with which we are not very familiar? 

 We do remember them, of course, but it is by 

 an unconscious memory. In like manner a 

 pupil, learning to play the pianoforte, is 

 obliged to call to mind each note; but the 

 skilful player goes through no such process 

 of conscious remembrance; his ideas, like 

 his movements, are automatic, and both so 

 rapid as to surpass the rapidity of succes- 

 sion of conscious ideas and movements. 

 MAUDSLEY Body and Mind, lect. 1, p. 25. 

 (A., 1898.) 



2151. MERMAID, ORIGIN OF FA- 

 BLE OF TheDugong Truth Underlying Fic- 

 tion. In the time of Alexander the Great 

 and afterwards under the Seleucidae, the 

 ancient Greeks became acquainted with the 

 northwestern part of India. Then and there 

 they heard many strange tales, which, as 

 usual (especially when two different races 

 and languages are concerned), lost nothing 

 in the telling. Among other things, they 

 heard that the seas about Ceylon were peo- 

 pled with mermaids. In this case, as in the 

 case of so many other wonderful tales, there 

 was a certain amount of truth underlying 

 the fiction; for those seas are peopled by 



