ON REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 33, 21 January 1911, Page 7

ON REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING.

, | <l»y Maurice Niev'L) j tveryonr envies those in whom' memory is powerfully developed. In the estimation of the man with a bad memo:’., it is a quality which is almost divine. Its presence ap pears to give immense advantages. Its absence seems to produce the bulk of the worries and anxieties of life. There is, however, a certain degree of danger in an extraordinary memory, and it may not be altogether an enviable possession. In all the abnormal manifestations of intellect there lies a germ of menace, and this is especially the case in the highly specialised" memoty. Among the common

'examples in history oi people wno jwssessed remarkable memories in a particular ciit * rtn>n. two facts arrest the attention. In the first place the gift is often short-lived. In the second place the general intellectual capacity is low. Most of the arithmetic prodigies, light ning calculators, and musical imitators have been idiot-savants. One of the most notable except ion; was the engineer Bidder, the foamier of the London t»■!< g.aphic system, who could work out such sums as •'ln the cube of 36. how many times 15.22*3 ?” in a few moments in his head, and retained the power till the day of his death. An abnormal memory betrays itself at an enHy age. Special precocity in calc.: hit ion showed itself in Whatley at three, in Colburn at six. in Mondeux and Bidder at ten. Whatley, who afterwards became Archbishop of retained t.ipeculiar facility mi calculating until six, whin it left hnn completely. Coib.-rn, an American prodigy. who in I araday s presence raised the number eignt to the six te€”th rower in his head, was a backward id:>?t. and died yom*u. Mondeux. a smphe’d-boy. star; I-.-e the Academy of Sciences of Pa.i by his powers. Li:t i” a iew years sank into intellectual ohsrnritv. An exaggerated memory for simple tunes is common amongst the .e. ble-minded. as well as a memory for unimportant matters, such as the numlx r of windows in a house or letters in a page. People remember the same thing in different ways. The readiest memory is known as the visual type, in which the oast can be re- j called in the form of vivid pie- i tures. Charcot, the I reach neu | rologist. records an interesting > case of this form of memory. A wealthy merchant of Bordeaux had so retentive a memory that he could repeat a pace of a news paper after reading it through once. He recalled al! the details of his business by mean.- oi mental pictures, and in this way could immediately remember the terms of agreements after many years interval. This singular power made him very successful. At the height of his prosperous career, he suddenly lost his visual memory. but retained an ordinary associative recollection of the past. In consequence. he found himself totally unable to cope with the intricacies of his extensive business, and. becoming a prey to melancholy, ended his life. Modern psychologists oppose the idea that the brain records every detail of ti e past. Then | are some cur>ous cases, how ever, j which cannot be explainetl other , •wise. In disturbances of the mi l vous system dur mu' delirium and | incipient insanity a patient will o: ten give an a»-.ot*nt of some forgotten incident. A peasant girl in) Germany. dit»i”.g an acute frerr. I began to recite Latin and Greik| verses, to the astonishment of her. doctor. When recovered she- [

retained tu> rcvolbction of the-n-It o* tin* sb»- lm<l been in; the service *’♦' a prole --.uh- who lt.-'s! | been in the La’u, <>: paeiiig about ( his room deelaiinimi in L«J ;:i ai 'I I Greek while the girl la’d his st?-! per. A very strange instance of i the persist.♦n<;> of the receptive* facility during uneor.-viuusncss is' found in the follov. mg case. A| boy. aged six. » ••ic • cJ a violent J on the head ami ’o.-t con-1 m*ioiisness for a day. b.vveral I vears after, during the delirium j of a fever, he gave* a complete ac-; count of the diners conversation with his mother dunns that period . of uncotisr’ nisness. |

Then' are carious methods of educating the memory in vogue at the present. (hie meets with people who learn a page' of verse each dav. in the hope that their memory will improve. They are wasting their time. The keynote to a uood memory i- a facile powe r of association, and it is only by cultivating the latter quality that the memory can be improved. Al the bottom of a bad memory is generally found the vice of imper ception. By this 1 n can a purely mechanical pe-eeption as opposem to an attentive scruti’y. This cm be we’l shown by a simple e.xper: ment known as »h< memory gunA number of simple objects a-< placed on the table. A definite 1

time is given for their observation, I and then a cloth is laid over them. | The players are then required to j detail them, one by one. The in- [ dividual extent of imperceptioii! will then show itself as follows. It will be found that, starting, say. with five objects and allowing, fifteen seconds for their examination. the players will remember 100 per cent until eight objects are used. Then they will begin to fail suddenly. For nine objects they may be only able to remember 50 ) I per cent. They have reached the full power of their ‘ imperceptive j memory.’’ But now they begin to : use a more attentive perception.) I They call up their resources, and. from ten to twelve objects they! will probably guess ‘tn per cent, j This increment, perhaps, is a ; rough estimate of their natural in- ( iterleetual resourcefulness. | ! Men of genius have notoriously i t bad memories. This is partly due ■to the habit of introspection. A ; I life which is largely spent in intro- ! f pcetion will show small powers of memo’w. There is little, if art. merno-y for abstract thought. .The general average of memory power is best in the lower classes, who are not giv**n to introspection. These people show an extraordinary memory for events such as illness. deaths and births, as well as

for names and faces. In fact. a| bad memory in this respect j amongst one of the' hover classes I is very frequent!', a valuable ding-I rostic sign of early cerebral mis- ' chief. When a good memory si;d- ! denly Hails. a uoetor always looks • out at once* for organic disease. l! is -aid that people with good tiencral an d. - dream very httte : ■ but this :s yr<>’;nb!y because' sued* ; people usually are of a practical: stamp and are uniuiag t;i! : ve. strong imagination, which tends to weaken reality and confound it ! with fiction, will underinii'e a good memory for facts. It is icteresi ing to ask people imw they reetd lect thing*-’. Most people find it sufficient to retain mmimerabh keys to mimo’-y. in the form m simple words which wid open up > the particular chambers of the past. I recently saw H :e ’pl" 1 book” of an author, in which odd words were jolted down. each ot them being a memory-kev to the

wm-r sufficient to recall the whole plot. Others have a wonderful capacity for remembering where * to look for a quotation without re-: .ollecting anytiynu further. Some persons, when recalling the days ; of the week, associate with each j >f them a definite colour or «’ i musical tone. The majority o ; people have a bad memory fm pain, and wi>l frequently be unable to recall its nature or situa ion correctly. Thus a man with, an >ld pb urisy of the right side may say. years later, that he felt the pain in the left side. It is just as j

well that we forget. If the mind remembered everything, link by link, it would be imiiossible to recall the events of a year ago without going patiently back through every detail of the intervening period; and, theoretically, that would take as long as we took to live that time through. A bad memory. therefore, is not altogether a curse. A person who suffers in this respect may frequeenly save himself from error by exercising a little ingenious diplomacy. A well-known physician of my acquaintance is very absentminded. and frequently forgets who his patients are. He has, however, remarkable powers of deduction. and by letting the patient ' converse to him for a short time generally succeeds in hitting upon J the right name and the details of j the case before the conversation I has proceeded far. *