"Papa always says it is a free country, she exclaimed, "but I never felt it to be the case before this moment." 46 For years this beautiful and accomplished creature had locked this awful secret in her innocent breast-that she didn't see much fun in John Gilpin. "You have given me courage," she said, 'to confess something else. Mr. Caldecott has just been illustrating in the same charming manner Goldsmith's Elegy on a Mad Dog, and-I'm very sorry but I never laughed at that before, either. I have pretended to laugh, you know,' she added hastily and apologetically, "hundreds of times." "I don't doubt it," I replied; "this is not such a free country as your father supposes. "I say nothing about right,'" I I answered, "except that everybody has a right to his own opinion. For my part, however, I think the Mad Dog better than John Gilpin only because it is shorter." Whether I was wrong or right in the matter is of no consequence even to myself; the affection and gratitude of that young creature would more than repay me for a much greater mistake, if mistake it is. She protests that I have emancipated her from slavery. She has since talked to me about all sorts of authors, from Sir Philip Sidney to Washington Irving, in a way that would make some people's blood run cold; but it has no such effect upon me-quite the reverse. Of Irving she naïvely remarks that his strokes of humor seem to her to owe much of their success to the rarity of their occurrence; the flashes of fun are spread over pages of dulness, which enhance them, just as a dark night is propitious to fireworks, or the atmosphere of the House of Commons, or a Court of Law, to a joke. She is often in error, no doubt, but how bright and wholesome such talk is as compared with the platitudes and commonplaces which one hears on all sides in connection with literature ! As a rule, I suppose, even people in society ("the drawing-rooms and the clubs") are not absolutely base, and yet one would really think so, to judge by the fear that is entertained by them of being natural. "I vow to heaven, says the prince of letter-writers, that I think the Parrots of Society are more intolerable and mischievous than its Birds of Prey. If ever I destroy myself, it will be in the bitterness of having those infernal and damnable good old times extolled." One is almost tempted to say the same--when one hears their praises come from certain mouths-of the good old books. It is not every one, of course, who has an opinion of his own upon any subject, far less on that of literature, but every one can abstain from expressing an opinion that is not his own. If one has no voice, what possible compensation can there be in becoming an echo? becoming an echo? clude, would wish to see literature discoursed about in the same pinchbeck and affected style as are painting and music ;* yet that is what will happen if this prolific weed of sham admiration is permitted to attain its full growth.The Nineteenth Century. No one, I con ILLUSIONS OF MEMORY. THE mystery of memory 'lies in the apparent immediateness of the mind's contact with the vanished past. In "looking back" on our life, we seem to ourselves for the moment to rise above the limitations of time, to undo its work of extinction, seizing again the realities. which its on-rushing stream had borne far from us. Memory is a kind of resurrection of the buried past as we fix our retrospective glance on it, it appears to start anew into life; forms arise within our minds which, we feel, faithfully represent the things that were. We do not ask for any proof of the fidelity of this dramatic representation of our past history by memory. It is seen to be a faithful imitation, just because it is felt to be a revival of the past. To seek to make " * The slang of art-talk has reached the young men' in the furniture warehouses. A friend of mine was recommended a sideboard the other day as not being a Chippendale, but " having a Chippendale feeling in it." To challenge the veracity of a person's memory is one of the boldest things one can do in the way of attacking deepseated conviction. Memory is the peculiar domain of the individual. In going back in recollection to the scenes of other years he is drawing on the secret storehouse of his own consciousness, with which a stranger must not intermeddle. Philosophers commonly distinguish memory as mediate knowledge of something absent, from perception as immediate knowledge of something present. Yet people are wont to feel just as certain of the one as of the other. Indeed, it may almost be said that a man more easily brooks a critical investigation of an act of perception than of an act of recollection. Perception has to do with our common objective world, and we allow others to have their say about the impressions it produces. Most people are willing, to some extent, to regulate and correct their individual perceptions of external objects by others' perceptions. And hardly anybody is so obstinate as to refuse to reinspect an object in deference to an assurance by others that what he thinks he has seen differs from the reality. But with respect to matters of recollection people are apt to be much more dogmatic. To cast doubt on a man's memory is commonly resented as a rude impertinence. It looks like an attempt of another to walk into the strictly private apartment of his own mind. Even if the challenger professedly bases his challenge on the testimony of his own memory, the challenged party is hardly likely to allow the right of comparing testimonies. He can in most cases boldly assert that those who differ from him are lacking in his power of recollection. The past, in becoming the past, has, for most people, ceased to be a common object of reference; it has become a part of the individual's own self, and cannot be easily dislodged or shaken. Let not the gentle reader imagine, then, from the title of this paper, that we are about to commit the sacrilege of questioning the veracity of memory in general. We are not bent on the suicidal Samsonian project of trying to shake the foundations of belief to the bottom, and to reduce the minds of our readers as well as our own from a state of comfortable security respecting the world to one of utter scepticism and confusion. Our more modest and, we would hope, perfectly legitimate aim is to point out that memory, like our other faculties, may blunder now and then. We would crave our readers' patience as we seek to prove that memory, notwithstanding the look of perfect sincerity it wears, is сараble of deceiving us; that when in the act of recollection we seem to be reaching and touching the past, we may be merely grasping a shadow. Those of our readers who are familiar with the phenomena of sense-illusion will feel but little hesitation in following us in this voyage of discovery into the comparatively unknown territory of memoryillusion. The fact that the stereoscope deceives us every time we look into it, by forcing us to see a solid object when we know there are only two flat photographs, does not lessen our belief in the general certainty of visual perception. Even the great savant Helmholtz, who probably knows more about optical illusion than any other living man, feels quite as confident of the reality of ordinary visible objects as the least scientific of men. of men. Similarly, it is possible to find out that memory is a very blundering witness in many cases, and yet to feel sure that she can be perfectly well depended on to speak the truth about things with which she may be assumed to be thoroughly familiar. Although people in general are, as observed, instinctively disposed to be very confident about matters of recollection, reflective persons are pretty sure to find out, sooner or later, that they occasionally fall into errors of memory. It is not the philosopher who first hints at the mendacity of memory, but the "plain man" who takes careful note of what really happens in the world of his personal experience. Thus we hear persons, quite innocent of speculative doubt, qualifying an assertion made on personal recollection by the proviso, unless my memory has played me false." And even less reflective persons, including many who pride themselves on their excellent memory, will, when sorely pressed, make a grudging admission that they may after all be in error. Perhaps the weakest degree of such an admission, and one which allows to the conceding party a semblance of victory, is illustrated in the last word" of one who has boldly maintained a proposition on the strength of individual recollection, but begins to recognize the instability of his position: "I either witnessed the occurrence or dreamt it." This is sufficient to prove that, with all people's boasting about the infallibility of memory, there are many who have a shrewd suspicion that some of its asseverations will not bear a very close scrutiny. We may, therefore, in our present inquiry, presume on some amount of general acquaintance with the fact of illusory recollection. In this study of the fallacies of memory we shall confine ourselves to illusions strictly so called-that is to say, to instances of error in which the mind has all the immediate assurance of distinctly recalling some past occurrence. Thus an illusion of memory exactly corresponds to an illusion of perception, when we seem to ourselves distinctly to see something, and yet afterward find that we do not see it. Hence our line of inquiry will not embrace the large subject of misty recollection, and of forgetfulness, which last some people think to be a more wonderful thing than memory itself. Hazy recollection is not illusive recollection, any more than hazy vision is illusive vision, though mistiness in each instance easily becomes the starting-point of illusion. Just as objects seen in a fog easily take a false appearance to the imagination, so events seen through the haze of years easily get transformed into something very different from the reality. It may be added that we shall throughout seek to illustrate mnemonic illusion by visual illusion. It will be found, we believe, that there is a close analogy between the forms of illusion in vision and recollection, as well as between the modes of their production, though, as far as we are aware, this parallelism has never been traced out. Since an illusion of memory is a sort of counterfeit recollection, we shall best understand the spurious imitation by understanding the genuine thing. Every complete act of memory appears to involve three things, and only three: the assurance (1) that something did really happen to me; (2) that it happened in the way I now think; and (3) that it happened when it appears to have happened. I cannot be said to recall a past event unless I feel sure on each of these points. Thus, to be able to say that an event happened at a particular date, and yet unable to describe how it happened, means that I have a very incomplete recollection. The same is true when I can recall an event pretty distinctly, but fail to assign it its proper date. This being so, it follows that there are three possible openings, and only three, by which errors of memory may creep in. And as a matter of fact each of these openings does let in one class of mnemonic illusion. Thus we have (1) false recollections, to which there correspond no real events of personal history; (2) others which misrepresent the manner of happening of the events; and (3) others which falsify the date of the event remembered. We said there was a close correspondence between illusions of perception and of recollection. The force of this remark may be seen in the fact that each of these classes of illusion answers to a variety of visual error. Class I may be likened to the optical illusions known as phosphenes, or apparent circles of light, which arise when the eyeball is pressed by the finger. Here we can prove that there is nothing actually seen in the field of vision, and that the semblance of a visible object arises from quite another source than that of ordinary light-stimulation, and by what may be called an accident. Similarly, in the case of the first class of mnemonic illusions, we shall find that there is nothing actually recollected, but that the mnemonic phosphene or phantom of recollected object can be accounted for in quite another way. Again, class 2 has its visual analogue in those optical illusions which depend on the effects of haziness already alluded to, of atmospheric action, and of any reflecting and refracting media interposed between the eye and the object. Examples of atmospheric effect are the apparent changes of color which objects undergo when seen at a distance. The effects of refraction and of reflection are illustrated by the broken appearance of a stick half immersed in water, and by the curious phenomena of mirage. In all these cases, though there is some real thing corresponding to the perception, this is seen in a highly defective, distorted, and misleading form. In like manner we can say that the images of memory often get obscured, distorted, and otherwise altered when they have reIceded into the dim distance, and are looked back upon through a long space of intervening mental experience. Finally, class 3 has its visual counterpart in erroneous perceptions of distance, as when, for example, owing to the clearness of the mountain atmosphere and the absence of intervening objects, the side of the Jungfrau looks to the inexperienced tourist at Wengernalp hardly farther than a stone's throw. It will be found that when our memory falsifies the date of an event, the error arises much in the same way as a visual miscalculation of distance. We will now try to illustrate these varieties of mnemonic illusion more fully, beginning with those which, by help of our analogy with optical illusions, may be called the phosphenes or spectra of memory. All recollection takes place by means of a present mental image which returns with a certain degree of vividness, and is instantaneously identified with some past event. In many cases this instinctive process of identification proves to be legitimate, for, as a matter of fact, real impressions are the first and the commonest source of such lively mnemonic images. But it is not always so. There are other sources of our mental imagery which compete, so to speak, with the region of real personal experience. And sometimes these leave a vivid image, having all the appearance of a genuine recollection. When this is so it is impossible by a mere introspective glance to detect the falsity of the message from the past. We are in the same position as the purchaser in a jet market, where a spurious commodity has got inextricably mixed up with the genuine, and there is no ready criterion by which he may distinguish the true from the false. Such a person, if he purchases freely, is pretty sure to make a number of mistakes. Similarly, all of us are liable to take counterfeit mnemonic images for genuine ones; that is NEW SERIES.-VOL. XXXI. No. 6 to say, to fall into an illusion of recollecting" what never really took place. But what, it may be asked, are these false and illegitimate sources of mnemonic images, these unauthorized mints which issue a spurious mental coinage, and so confuse the genuine currency? They consist of two regions of our internal mental life which most closely resemble the actual perception of real things in vividness and force, namely, dream-consciousness and waking imagination. Each of these may introduce into the mind vivid images which tend, under certain circumstances, to assume the guise of recollections of actual events. That our dream-experience may now and again lead us to fall into illusory recollection has already been hinted. And it is easy to see why this is so. When dreaming we have a mental experience which closely approximates in intensity and reality to that of waking perception. To the savage, dreams are as real as waking perceptions, and it is probable that young children take their dream-world for a real and substantial structure. Consequently, dreams may leave behind them, for a time, vivid images which simulate the appearance of real images of memory. Most of us, perhaps, have felt this after-effect of dreaming on our waking thoughts. How hard it is sometimes to shake off the impression left by a vivid dream that a dead friend has returned to life! During the day that follows the dream, we have at intermittent moments something like an assurance that we have seen the departed one; and though we immediately correct the impression by reflecting that we are recalling but a dream, it tends to revive within us with a strange pertinacity. In addition to this proximate effect of a dream in disturbing the normal process of recollection, there is reason to suppose that dreams may exert a more remote effect on our memories So widely different in its form is our dreaming from our waking experience that our dreams are rarely recalled as wholes with perfect distinctness. They revive in us only as disjointed fragments, and for brief moments when some accidental resemblance in the present happens to stir the latent trace they have left on our minds. We get sudden flashes out of our dream 44 world, and the process is too rapid, too incomplete for us to identify the region whence the flashes come. It is highly probable that our dreams are, to a large extent, answerable for the sense of familiarity that we sometimes experience in visiting a new locality, or in seeing a new face. If, as some of the best authorities say, we are, when asleep, always dreaming more or less distinctly, and if, as. we know, dreaming is a continual process of transformation of our waking impressions in new combinations, it is not surprising that our dreams should sometimes take the form of forecasts of our waking life, and that objects and scenes of this life never before seen should now and again wear a familiar look. That some instances of this puzzling sense of familiarity can be explained in this way is proved. In a very interesting work on dreams, "Schlaf und Traum," recently published by Paul Radestock, the writer says: When I have been taking a walk, with my thoughts quite unfettered, the idea has often occurred to me that I had seen, heard, or thought of this or that thing once before, without being able to recall when, where, and in what circumstances. This happened at the time when, with a view to the publication of the present work, I was in the habit of keeping an exact record of my dreams. Consequently I was able to turn to this after these impressions, and on doing so I generally found the conjecture confirmed that I had previously dreamt something like it." Scientific inquiry is often said to destroy all beautiful thoughts about nature and life; but while it destroys it creates. Is it not almost a romantic idea that just as our waking life images itself in our dreams, so our dream-life may send back some of its shadowy phantoms into our prosaic every-day world, touching this with something of its own weird beauty? Not only may dreams beget these momentary illusions of memory, they may give rise to something like permanent illusions. If a dream serves to connect a certain idea with a place or person, and subsequent experience does not tend to correct this, we may keep the belief that we have actually witnessed the event. And we may naturally expect that this result will occur most frequently in the case of those who habitually dream vividly, as young children. It seems to us that many of the quaint fancies which children get into their heads about things they hear of arise in this way. The present writer, when a child, got the notion that when his baby-brother was weaned he was taken up on a grassy hill and tossed about. He had a vivid idea of having seen this curious ceremony. He has in vain tried to get an explanation of this picturesque rendering of an incident of babyhood from his friends, and has come to the conclusion that it was the result of a dream. If, as seems probable, children's dreams thus give rise to subsequent illusions of memory, the fact would throw a curious light on some of the startling quasi-records of childish experience to be met with in autobiographical literature. Oddly enough, too, old age seems to resemble youth in this confusion of dream-recollection with waking memory. Dr. Carpenter* tells us of a lady of advanced age who ally dreams about passing events, and seems entirely unable to distinguish between her dreaming and her waking experiences, narrating the former with implicit belief in them, and giving directions based on them." This confusion in the case of the old probably arises not from an increase in the intensity of the dreams, but from a decrease in the intensity of the waking impressions. As Sir Henry Holland remarks, in old age life approaches to the state of a dream. 46 continu The other source of what we have called the phosphenes or spectra of memory is waking imagination. In certain morbid conditions of mind, and in the case of the few healthy minds endowed with special imaginative force, the products of this mental activity closely resemble dreams in their vividness and apparent actuality. When this is the case, illusions of memory may arise at once just as in the case of dreams. *"Mental Physiology," p. 456. + Ibid., 2d ed., p. 172. The close connection and continuity between normal and abnormal states of mind is illustrated in the fact that in insanity this illusion of taking past imaginations for past Aberrealities becomes far more persistent. crombie ("Intellectual Powers," Part III. sect. iv. § 2, Insanity') speaks of "visions of the imagination which have formerly been indulged in of that kind which we call waking |