NATORE 
169 
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1882 
DISEASES OF MEMORY 
Diseases of Memory ; an Essay in the Positive Psychology. 
By Th. Ribot. International Scientific Series, Vol. 
XLIII. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, and Co., 
1882.) 
DN. WORK on such a subject as this from the pen of 
M. Ribot, cannot fail to be a good work, and 
although in the one which he has published there is not 
much originality either in respect of facts or of theories, it is 
of value as a clearly arranged account of what we know 
concerning the psychology of memory, united with philo- 
sophically wholesome views of interpretation. 
It is first shown that the word memory, as ordinarily 
used, has a triple meaning : ‘‘the conservation of certain 
conditions, their reproduction, and their localisation in 
the past” (recollection). The third element here, which 
is most purely a part of consciousness, appears to be an 
element superadded to the other two. Neglecting it 
therefore in the first instance, the author seeks to “reduce 
the problem to its simplest terms, and try to discover 
how, without the aid of consciousness, a new condition is 
implanted in the organism, is conserved and reproduced ; 
in other words, how memory is formed independently of 
all cognition.” Here it is well shown that all analogies 
drawn from inorganic sources are misleading—such as 
the facts of insolation, photography, &c. ‘ Conservation, 
the first condition of recollection, is found, but that alone; 
for in these instances reproduction is so passive, so de- 
pendent upon the intervention of a foreign agent, that 
there is no resemblance to the natural reproduction of 
the memory. Hence, in studying our subject, it must 
never be forgotten that we have to do with vital laws, not 
with physical laws ; and that the bases of memory must 
be looked for in the properties of organic (? organised) 
matter, and nowhere else.” 
The first true analogy to be found is that of muscular 
fibre responding more feebly at first to the excitation 
transmitted by a motor nerve than it afterwards does 
when it has frequently been stimulated, allowing natural 
periods of repose. This is taken to be a true analogy, 
because in nerve as in muscle, “everywhere we perceive, 
with an increase of activity and proper intervals of repose, 
an increased power of organic functions.” But even here, 
we think, the objection might fairly be made that the 
analogy is scarcely sound, inasmuch as there is no 
evidence to prove that the increase of power in a muscle 
due to use, is due to an increase in the power of the 
individual fibres. We think some better parallels might 
have been chosen from the region of muscle physiology 
—such, for instance, as the effect of the constant current 
in leaving behind it for several minutes after it has ceased 
to pass through a muscle a change in the excitability of 
the fibres, so that they are less responsive to a renewal of 
the current in the same direction, and more so to its pas- 
sage in the opposite direction. The following paragraph, 
however, is in our opinion above all criticism, and should 
be well burnt into the memory of all who write about 
memory. 
VOL. XXviI.—No. 686 
“‘The true type of organic memory—and here we enter 
the heart of our subject—must be sought in the group of 
facts to which Hartley has given the appropriate title of 
secondary automatic actions, as opposed to those auto- 
matic functions which are primitive or innate. These 
secondary automatic actions, or acquired movements, are 
the very basis of our every-day existence. ...In a 
general way it may be said that the limbs and other 
sensorial organs of the adult act with facility only because 
of the sum of acquired and co-ordinated movements 
which forms for such part of the body its special memory, 
the accumulated capital on which it lives, and through 
which it acts—just as the mind lives and acts in the 
medium of past experience. To the same category 
belong those groups of movements of a more.artificial 
character which constitute the apprenticeship of the 
manual labourer, and are called into action in games of 
skill, bodily exercise, &c.” : 
The first requisite to the formation of these automatic 
movements is association, the original material being 
provided by primitive reflex actions, which require by 
frequent repetition or practice to be properly grouped, 
some combined and others excluded. Such organic 
memory resembles psychological memory in all but one 
point—the absence of consciousness. Thus all the fol- 
lowing features are common to both: “acquisition, some- 
times immediate, sometimes gradual; repetition of the 
act necessary in some cases, useless in others; an in- 
equality of the organic memory according to individuals 
—it is rapid with some, slow, or totally refractory with 
others (awkwardness is the result of a deficient organic 
memory). With some, associations once formed are 
permanent ; with others, they are easily lost or forgotten. 
We observe the arrangement of actions in simultaneous 
or successive series, as if for conscious recollection, and 
here is a fact worthy of careful notice; each member of 
the series swggests what is to follow.’’ 
Touching the changes produced in nerve-tissue, which 
constitute the objective side of memory, M. Ribot properly 
observes that it is scarcely safe to speculate, as they are 
beyond the reach of histology or of histo-chemistry, though 
facts in abundance prove that some such changes take 
place, and the probability is, as expressed in a quotation 
from Maudsley, that ‘‘ every impression leaves a certain 
ineffaceable trace; that is to say, molecules once dis- 
arranged and forced to vibrate in a different way, cannot 
return exactly to their primitive state.’? But over and 
above this particular modification, which may be sup- 
posed to be impressed upon the molecular constitution of 
the nervous elements concerned in an act of memory, 
M. Ribot points out that there must be a “‘second con- 
dition, which consists in the establishment of stable 
associations between different groups of nervous ele- 
ments.” This, we think, is a most important point, and 
one which, in our author’s opinion, has not hitherto 
received the attention thatit deserves. In his own words, 
“Tt is of the highest importance that attention should be 
given to this point, viz. that organic memory supposes 
not only a modification of nervous elements, du¢ the 
formation among them of determinate associations for 
each particular act, the establishment of certain dynamic 
affinities, which, by repetition, become as stable as the 
primitive anatomical connections. In our opinion, the 
important feature with regard to the basis of memory is 
not only the modification impressed upon each element, 
I 
