10 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 



are compelled to carry it on mentally, and are not allowed 

 visible counters. In this case the steps are no more diffi- 

 cult, but the difficulty of retaining them is greatly in- 

 creased. Mere reverie, in which the transitions are very 

 loose, is restful rather than fatiguing. 



It is an ultimate fact in neurology that connections once 

 established in images or in actions, become increasingly 

 easy and spontaneous. The power to utter words by rote, 

 into which complete memory is constantly passing, is plainly 

 the result of nervous and muscular training. Literary mat- 

 ter which has just been learned can be repeated but slowly 

 and hesitatingly. A repetition on successive days greatly 

 increases the facility of movement, and a repetition at dis- 

 tant periods very much strengthens the hold of the mind. 

 We often render aloud lines of poetry, giving full sway to 

 the rhythm, as a means of recalling one or more missing 

 words. The loss of memory by disease and its restoration 

 of health find explanation in these neural connections. More 

 recent occurrences suffer most from this loss of recollection, 

 and the power of memory returns ;by first regaining more 

 distant events, those whose connections have been fully 

 established in the nervous system. This method of restora- 

 tion is made plain by the simple fact that memory is supple- 

 mented by vital connections in the nervous system of 

 perceptions and of actions. A memory which easily lays 

 hold of an idea, but retains with difficulty the precise words 

 in which it is stated, is doubtless to be explained by diver- 

 sity in the cerebral conditions of language; as much as is 

 hesitancy in speech as contrasted with volubility. Memory 

 is evidently much modified by the fact that it so often in- 

 volves the physical condition of expression. 



More than one instance of this kind has come to my 

 knowledge. A person, awakened from a deep sleep, has re- 

 called certain thoughts that were present to the mind, and 

 also words that accompanied them. Giving the subject 

 closer atention, he has been surprised to find that the words 

 did not belong to the thoughts, but seemed to have been 

 evoked vaguely by them. The thought-process stirred the 

 faculties of expression without controlling them. In like 



