time to be working retrogressively. I venture to offer the following explanation:

portant part since without it reproduction is impossible, presupposes a primary condition which can only be vaguely defined as a normal constitution of the brain. As we have seen, idiots suffer from congenital amnesia, from innate inability to fix impressions in the memory. This primary condition is a postulate, not simply a condition of memory, but the necessary condition of the existence of memory.

The image thus formed, as has been said, is highly intense-of the nature of an hallucination. Consequently the real impression is thrown into the background, bearing the less distinct character of a recollection. It is localized in the past, erroneously if you consider the facts objectively, rightly if you consider them subjectively. This hallucinational state, though very vivid, does not, in fact, efface the real impression; but as it is produced by it and becomes detached from it, it appears like a subsequent experience. It takes the place of the real impression, appears the more recent of the two, and in fact is the more recent. For us who look at the thing from without and in the light of what has taken place ou side of the mind of the subject, it is not true that the impression has been received twice; but from the point of view of the subject himself, who judges according to what consciousness tells him, it is true that the impression has been received twice, and within those limits his as-ism of this function. The minutest histoseveration is incontestable.

In support of this explanation I may add that false memory is nearly always associated with mental disorder. The patient spoken of by Pick was subject to one form of insanity-he supposed himself to be the victim of persecution. Hence the formation of hallucinational images is quite natural. Still I do not pretend that my explanation is the only possible one. The case being so very uncommon, further and more careful observation is requisite

CHAPTER V.

CONCLUSION.

Relations between the retention of perceptions and nutrition, between the reproduction of recollections and the general and local circulation-Influence of the quantity and quality of the blood-Examples-The law of regression connected with a physiological principle and a psychological principleRecapitulation.

I.

So far we have been describing the diseases of memory and seeking the law which Before we conclude we must governs them. say a word as to the causes, of course we mean immediate, organic causes. But even reduced to these terms the etiology of disorders of memory is very obscure, and very little is clearly ascertained with regard to it. Memory consists in retaining and reproducing: retention seems to depend above all on nutrition; reproduction on the general or

This normal condition of the brain being granted, it is not enough that impressions be received, they must be fixed, organically registered, incrusted, so to speak: they must become a permanent modification of the brain; the modifications impressed upon the nerve-cells and nerve-filaments, and the dynamic associations between these elements must be made stable. This result can be produced only by nutrition. The brain, and particularly the gray matter, receives an enormous volume of blood. In no other part of the body is the nutritive function so active or so rapid. We know not the inner mechan

logical research is unable to trace the arrangements and rearrangements of the molecules. We know only the effects-all beside is but induction. But all sorts of facts go to show the close connection between nutrition and memory.

It is matter of every-day observation that children learn with wonderful facility, and that anything, as languages, which calls only for memory, is readily learned by them. We know, furthermore, that habits-that is to say one form of memory--are far more easilyformed in childhood, in youth, than in maturity. At that period of life, so great is the activity of the nutritive process that new connections are rapidly formed. In the aged, on the contrary, a rapid effacement of new impressions coincides with a considerable decline of this activity.

To fix recollec

That which is too quickly learned does not endure. When we say that a thing is "assimilated," we use no metaphor. I shall not dwell upon a truth that every one is ever repeating, little suspecting that this psychic fact has an organic cause. tions requires time, because nutrition does not accomplish its work instantaneously: the molecular movement constituting nutrition must proceed in one constant direction, and this end is served by the periodic renewal of the same impression.*

*"A distinguished theatrical performer," says Abercrombie, "in consequence of the sudden illness of another actor, had occasion to prepare himself, on very short notice, for a part which was entirely new to him; and the part was long and rather difficult. He acquired it in a very short time, and went through it with perfect accuracy, but immediately after the performance forgot every word of it. Characters which he had acquired in a more deliberate manner he never forgets, but can perform them at any time without a moment's preparation; but in regard to the character now mentioned, there was the further and I. Retention, which plays the more im-very singular fact that, though he has repeatedly

the local circulation.

Fatigue in every shape is fatal to memory. We here touch the ultimate cause of mem The impressions received under such condi- ory biologically considered; it is an impreg tions are not fixed, and the reproduction of nation. It is therefore not surprising that them is very laborious and often impossible. an eminent English surgeon, in treating of Now, fatigue is regarded as a stat: wherein, the indellible impression made by infectious owing to the over activity of an organ, the diseases on living tissues, should have in nutrition suffers and halts. When the nor-dited the following passage, which seems mal conditions are restored, memory comes back again. The case already quoted from Sir Henry Holland is decisive upon this point. We have seen that in cases of temporary amnesia, caused by concussion of the brain, the amnesia is always retroactive, extending back to a period of greater or less duration, anterior to the accident. This rule is almost without exception. Most physiologists who have studied this p' enomenon, refer it to defective nutrition; the organic registration, which consists in a nutritive modification of the cerebral matter, has not had time to take place.

Finally it is to be noted that the gravest form of disease of memory, namely the progressive amnesia of the demented, of the aged, and of general paralytics, is produced by a steadily increasing atrophy of the nerveelements. The tubes and the cells undergo a process of degenerescence, and the latter eventually disappear, leaving behind an undifferentiated mass of matter.

These physiological and psychological facts all show that there exists between nutrition and retention the relation of cause and effect. There is exact coincidence between their periods of rise and fal!. Variations short or long in the one are repeated in the other. If the one be active, or moderate, or lauguishing, so is the other. Hence the retention of recollections must not be regarded metaphysically, and as a "state of the soul" subsisting no one knows where, but as an acquired state of the cerebral organ implying the possibility of states of consciousness whenever their conditions of existence are present.

made to our hand: "It is asked," says Sir James Paget, how can the brain be the organ of memory when you suppose its substance to be ever changing? or how is it that your assumed nutritive change of all the particles of the bain is not as destructive of all memory and knowledge of sensuous things as the sudden destruction by some great injury is? The answer is, because of the exactness of assimilation accomplished in the formative process; the effect once produced by an impression on the brain, whether in perception or in intellectual act, is fixed and there retained; because the part, be it what it may, which has been thereby changed, is exactly represented in the part which, in the course of nutrition, succeeds to it." Paradoxical as the connection between an infectious disease and memory may seem, it is nevertheless rigorously exact, from the biological point of view.

II. In a general way the reproduction of recollections secms to depend on the state of the circulation. This point is much more obscure than the preceding, and the data concerning it are very incomplete. One difficulty arises out of the rapidity with which the phenomena succeed one another, and their continual changes. Another difficulty is due to their complexity. For reproduction does not depend on the general circulation alone, but also on the special circulation of the brain, and probably there are in the latter, too, local variations that may exert a strong influence. Nor is that all. We have, further, to take into account the quality no less than the quantity of the blood.

The extreme rapidity of nutritive changes It is impossible to determine, even roughly, in the brain, though at first it might appear the part played by each of these factors in to cause instability, in fact explains the fix- the mechanism of reproduction. We must be ation of recollections. "The waste follow-content with showing that circulation and reing activity is restored by nutrition, and a production present correlative variations. The trace or residuum remains embodied in the main facts going to confirm this view are as constitution of the nervous center, becoming follows: more complete and distinct with each succeeding repetition of the impression; an acquired na ure is grafted on the original nature of the cell by virtue of its plastic power.

performed it since that time, he has been obliged each time to prepare it anew, and has never acquired in regard to it that facility which is familiar to him in other instances. When questioned respecting the mental process which he employed the first time he performed this part, he says that he lost sight entirely

of the audience, and seemed to have nothing before him but the pages of the book from which he had learned it; and that if anything had occurred to interrupt the illusion, he should have stopped instantly." (Op. cit., p. 103.)

Maudsley, Physiol. and Pathol. of the Mind".

Fever in its several degrees is accompanied by cerebral over-activity, and in this memory largely shares. We have already seen to what a degree of excitation it may attain. We know that in fever the rapidity of the circulation is excessive, that the constitution of the blood is changed, that it is loaded with elements resulting from too accelerated a process of combustion. Here we see a variation in quality and in quantity, which finds expression in hypermnesia.

Even when no fever exists, "impressions of trivial things, in which no particular interest was taken, often survive in memory when

*"Lecture on Surgical Pathology.

If the return is the result of reeducationand this is more usual-nutrition appears to play the principal part. The rapidity with which the patient learns again shows that all was not lost. The cells may have been atrophied, but if their nuclei (generally regarded as the sources from which they are reproduced) give rise to other cells, then the In persons debilitated by protracted disease, bases of memory are by that very fact rememory grows weak with the circulation. established: the new cells resemble the parent "Highly nervous subjects, in whom the ac- cells in virtue of the tendency of all organtion of the heart is greatly lowered, habitu- ismis to maintain their type, and of all acquired ally complain of loss of memory and inability modifications to become transmitted modificato think-symptoms which diminish as fast tions; in this case, memory is only a form of as the natural rate of circulation is heredity. gained." +

duration and which are less instructive, and studying those whose evolution is normal, we have shown that:

In general dissolution of memory, the loss of recollections, follows an invariable order, namely: first, recent events; next, ideas in general; then, feelings; lastly, acts.

In partial dissolution of the most usual type, namely, sign-amnesia, the loss of recollection again proceeds according to an invariable order, viz., proper names, common nouns, adjectives and verbs, interjections, gestures. The order is the same in both, namely, there is a regression from the more recent to the older, from the complex to the simple, from the voluntary to the automatic, from the less to the more organized.

The exactitude of this law of regression is proved by the very rare instances in which progressive dissolution of memory is followed

PREFACE,

by recovery; the recollections in that cast come back in the inverse order of their disappearance.

By the aid of this law of regression we have been enabled to explain the extraordi nary reviviscence of certain recollections as a reversion of the mind back to states that seemed to have been effaced forever.

We have connected our law with the phy. siological principle that degenerescence first affects that which is of most recent forma tion; and with the psychological principle, that the complex disappears before the sim ple, because it is less often repeated in expe rience.

Finally, our pathological study has led us to the conclusion that memory consists of an organization process having varying degrees of perfection between these two extreme limits-the new state, the organic registration.

CHAPTER I.-MEMORY AS A BIOLOGICAL FACT, Memory essentially a biological fact, incidentally a psychic fact-Organic memoryModifications of nerve-elements; dynamic associations between these elementsConscious memory-Conditions of consciousness: intensity; duration-Unconscious cerebration-Nerve action is the fundamental condition of memory; consciousness is only an accessory-Localization in the past, or recollection-Mechanism of this operation-It is not a simple and instantaneous act; it consists of the addition of secondary states of consciousness to the principal state of consciousness-Memory is a vision in time-Localization, theoretical and practicalReference points—Resemblance and difference between localization in the future and in the past-All memory an illusion-Forgetfulness a condition of memoryReturn to the starting point: conscious memory tends little by little to become automatic.

CHAPTER II.-GENERAL AMNESIA,

Classification of the diseases of memory-Temporary amnesia-Epileptics-Forgetfulness of certain periods of life-Examples of re-education-Slow and sudden recoveries-Case of provisional memory-Periodical or intermittent amnesiaFormation of two memories, totally or partially distinct-Cases of hypnotism recorded by Macnish, Azam and Dufay-Progressive amnesia-Its importance; reveals the law which governs the destruction of memory-Law of regression; enunciation of this law-In what order memory fails-Counter-proof; it is reconstituted in inverse order-Confirmatory facts-Congenital amnesia-Extraordinary memory of some idiots.

CHAPTER III.-PARTIAL AMNESIA,

Reduction of memory to memories-Anatomical and physiological reasons for partial memories-Amnesia of numbers, names, figures, forms, etc.-Amnesia of signs -Its nature; a loss of motor-memory-Examination of this point-Progressive amnesia of signs verifies completely the law of regression-Order of dissolution; proper names; common nouns; verbs and adjectives; interjections and language of the emotions; gestures-Relation between this dissolution and the evolution of the Indo-European languages-Counter-proof: return of signs in inverse order. CHAPTER IV.-EXALTATION OF MEMORY, OR HYPERMNESIA,

General excitation-Partial excitation-Return of lost memories-Return of forgotten languages-Reduction of this fact to the law of regression-Case of false memory-Examples, and a suggested explanation.

CHAPTER V.-CONCLUSION,

Relations between the retention of perceptions and nutrition, between the reproduction of recollections and the general and local circulation-Influence of the quantity and quality of the blood-Examples-The law of regression connected with a physiological principle and a psychological principle-Recapitulation.

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45

THE

CHILDHOOD OF RELIGIONS

EMBRACING A SIMPLE ACCOUNT OF

THE BIRTH AND GROWTH OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS.

BY EDWARD CLODD, F. R. A. S.,

AUTHOR OF THE CHILDHOOD OF THE World."

CHAPTER 1.

INTRODUCTORY.

A poet who has put many wise and tender thoughts into verses full of music, once wrote some lines on the birthday of a great and good man, whose life's delight was in listening to all that Nature has to tell, and who not long since passed away from earth to learn new lessons in some other part of the wide universe of God.

The poem tells us that as the boy lay in his cradle,

"Nature, the old nurse, took

The child upon her knee,
Saying: Hero is a story-book

Thy Father has written for thee.
"Come wafer with me,' she said,
Into regions yet untrod;
And read what is still unread
In the manuscripts of God.'

*And he wandered away and away
With Nature, the dear old nurse,
Who sang to him night and day,
The rhymes of the universe.

"And whenever the way seemed long,
Or his heart began to fail,
She would sing a more wonderful song,
Or tell a more marvelous tale."

It is some fragment of the wonderful story "without an end" to which Agassiz (for it is he of whom Longfellow speaks in the poein) listened so gladly, a story as true as it is wonderful and as beautiful as it is true, that I want to tell you, if you too wish to open your young eyes to the sights that ever grow more charmful, and your ears to the sounds that give forth no unsweet notes; otherwise the story is not for you.

To learn well the lessons which Nature is ever willing to teach, we must begin while we are young, for then the memory is "wax to receive and marble to retain." The mind, like a knife, quickly rusts if it be not used. Unless the eye is trained to see, it becomes dim; unless the ear is trained to hear, it gets dulled; and this is why so many, careless to sharpen their wits on the whetstone of outfook and thought, enter into life and pass away from it, never knowing in what a world of beauty, of bounty, and of wonder they have lived.