MEMORY

Evening Star, Issue 19199, 16 March 1926, Page 12

MEMORY

SOME REMARKABLE EXAMPLES LEASMS NOVELS BY HEART The variations in the faculty of memory are enormous (writes Arthur Lynch, in ‘ T.P.’s and Cassell’s Weekly ’), not only from one person to another, but in the same individual in diverse conditions of health or in regard to subjects of different interests. Moreover, though there are some who boast, and perhaps justifiably, of possessing good memories, it may happen that the memory is not strong through arid through, just as there arc men who are physically very highly developed, but who may yet bo weak in some one group of muscles, while others of a feeble general constitution may possess some muscles of great strength. There are students who cannot remember, for example, what they read in a book, but who will hold tenaciously in mind what they have heard the professor aay in class, and years afterwards will repeat his very intonation. There are others, and perhaps the majority, who remember what they have seen, and who recall not only the words of a book they have read, but also the place in the page and the character of the type. Remarkably enough, when I seek • the best examples of these two kinds, I find two young Chinese students whom 1 knew in Australia. One of them when he was almost twelve was taught Chinese by his uncle, who used" to recite from a book, the boy afterwards repeating the lesson, although he did not understand the meaning of the words. In this way they went through a story book, and at length the boy was able to give forth tbo whole of the contents without knowing what he was saying. Then 'his uncle taught him the moaning of the words, and so by this severe method, that would have broken the brains of most pupils, the boy learnt to .speak Chinese perfectly. Another Chinese student could read several pages of a history book in English, close it, and then repeat the words. There is another form "f power in memory which depends less on bearing and seeing than in the observance of logical sequences. A boy who has cultivated this faculty will easily recall the entire sequence of a book of geometry, though if he attempted to learn it by heart ho would fail miserably. There are many examples of men endowed with extraordinary memories. Gustave Dore, the celebrated artist, prided himself on remembering all the details of a form lie had studied, and Turner had stored up in his mind a wonderful array of scenic effects. Cardinal Mezzofanti never forgot a word that he had once heard, oven in a foreign language, and George Borrow had the same • faculty in a high degree. With the reasoners, the immediate memory is relatively of loss importance. I once heard Henri Poincare, the mathematician, say that he had no great memory /or famuli®.' 9,n the other hand, his sis-

tor, Madame Houlroux, wife of the philosopher, though she had not specially studied mathematics, had a remarkable faculty for remembering numbers, as, for instance, telephone numbers. At one period, in preparation for the chapter on memory in my ‘ Psychology ’ X undertook a series of experiments. That involved me in many years of very ordinary work, but they were conceived with the object of determining "definite problems, and I now give in a general form some of the results.

Ono of my exercises was to learn by heart a novel of 40,000 words; and long passages from the poets, Keats and Shelley, and Milton, including, indeed, the bulk : of ‘ Paradise Lost,’ as well as the shorter poems, such as ‘ L’Allegro,’ 1 11 Pcnseroso,’ and the sonnets. Further, I put into the form 'of mnemonics a scries of facts in physiology and in astronomy; and to these I added a large number of the most complex mathematical formulas in a subject which at that time I had not _ studied, so that the formulas had no meaning for mo. At first the labor of memorising was very severe, but .after some weeks I acquired ■such facility that every morning I used to review the entire array, seeing them pass before my mind as if a pictorial tape wore drawn rapidly through my brain. After observing various effects I slopped the exercises and noted the manner of the lapse from recollection. -

One point that I found was this: In poetry, in addition to the inspirational passages, there are others which are necessary to keep the continuity of the theme. These I called the connective tissue, and the connective tisane was the first to fade. Last of all to go was the general sense, intention, and “ atmosphere ’ of the poem; those are no douht t lie first to appear in the poet’s mind. Something similar was true of the novel; the actual words soon disappeared except that here and there a striking phrase remained like a buoy on a waste of water: but the atmosphere, the general movement of the story, one or two episodes, and the style of the characters were still vital when all else was lost. Memory became a great critic of values. During tbo same period I made experiments to show the effect not only of repetition and disuse, but of the influence of other occupations, and particularly of fatigue. I studied also the gradual recovery of recollection by following out a clue that has remained. These experiments gave mo an explanation of the problem which has a mystical side, of the sense of an imperfect souvenir, the deja-va (“once seen”) of the French philosophers. Wo are in the midst, say, of certain associations, and suddenly there comes a peculiar sense as if this were but Die repetition of a past experience. ■ The whole subject is a vast one, and it has occupied the minds not only of psychologists but of poets ::nd novelists—Sir Walter Scott, Shelley, Jules Lemaitre —and I believe it to have been the germ of the idea that Plato elaborated in the■ doctrine of reincarnation. It is, however, susceptible, of a rational explanation. I merely throw off the suggestion hero; the full explanation would require a volume and would involve not only psychology in its narrower sense but a study of physiological processes, for every mental act has a physical act, as its “correlative.”