274 MEMOEY. 



I am told that those who are much in court remember 

 that " Liars should have good memories." and govern 

 themselves accordingly. 



We are confident that much misrepresentation of 

 facts, termed lying, is not intentional but results from 

 poor memory and from a morbid imagination. A mor- 

 bid imagination presents phantasy for facts. 



Undoubtedly we retain in mind very much that we 

 cannot recall at will. 



Dr. Carpenter writes : "It is, I believe, the general 

 creed of metaphysicians that no idea once fully compre- 

 hended by the mind ever permanently drops out of it ; 

 while physiologists are no less strong in the conviction 

 that every act records itself in some change in the brain, 

 which may lead to its reproduction before the conscious- 

 ness at any distance of time." 



And De Quincy adds : "I feel assured that there is 

 no such thing as ultimate forgetting ; traces once im- 

 pressed upon the memory are indestructible ; a thousand 

 accidents may and will interpose a veil between our 

 present consciousness and the secret inscriptions on the 

 mind. Accidents of the same sort will also rend the 

 veil. But alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the inscrip- 

 tion remains forever." 



But there exists a wide gulf between the belief thus 

 expressed — that the mind never forgets anything — and 

 what we all feel to be our actual experience, that we do 

 forget very many things. 



Mr. Kay attempts to explain what is the nature of that 

 gulf, and suggests how it can be bridged in many places. 



Those who regard memory a distinct faculty instead 

 of a condition of activity of all the faculties, are liable 

 to the serious error of concluding that exercise of 

 memory in any direction whatever insures increased 

 power in all directions. But this is not true. Dr. 

 Harris well says : (Kay's " Memory," p. 6.) 



230 



