Besant A. - Memory: Difference between revisions

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{{Style P-Quote|1=Verona a celebrated grammarian or critic of that name, who had contributed to the restoration of learning in Italy”|signature=(pp. 14, 15).}}

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{{Style P-Quote|1=“At the approach of death, also, the extraordinary exaltation of memory, connected with a change in the measure of time, has been frequently observed. Fechner ( ‘Zentralblatt für Anthropologie and Naturwissenschaft,’ Jahrgang 1863, 774) relates the case of a lady who fell into the water and was nearly drowned. From the moment when all bodily movements ceased till she was drawn out of the water, about two minutes elapsed, during which, according to her own account, she lived again through her whole past, the most insignificant details of it being represented in imagination. Another instance of the same mental action in which the events of whole years were crowded together, is described by Admiral Beaufort from his own experience. He had fallen into the water, and had lost (normal) consciousness. In this condition ‘thought rose after thought, with a rapidity of succession that is not only indescribable, but probably inconceivable by anyone who has not himself been in a similar situation.’ At first the immediate consequences of his death for his family were presented to him; then his regards turned to the past; he repeated his last cruise, an earlier one in which he was shipwrecked, his schooldays, the progress he then made, and the time he had wasted, even all his small childish journeys and adventures. ‘Thus travelling backwards, every incident of my past life seemed to me to glance across my recollection in retrograde succession, ''not,'' however, ''in mere outline,'' as here stated, but the picture ''filled up'' with every minute and collateral feature; in short, the whole period of my existence seemed to be placed before me in a ''kind of panoramic review,'' and every act of it seemed to be accompanied by a consciousness of right and wrong, or by some reflection on its cause or its consequences. Indeed, many trifling events, which had long been forgotten, then crowded into my imagination, and with the character of recent familiarity.’ (Haddock, ‘Somnolism and Psychism,’ p. 213.) In this case, also, but two minutes at the most had passed, before Beaufort was taken out of the water.”}}

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{{Style P-Quote|1=his horse whilst hunting. He was taken from the field to a neighbouring cottage in a state of unconsciousness, and was subsequently removed to his own residence. For the period of a week his life was considered in imminent danger. When he was restored sufficiently to enable him to articulate, he began to talk German, a language he had acquired in early life, but had not spoken for nearly twenty-five years . . . . . A gentleman had a serious attack of illness. When restored, it was found that he had lost all recollection of ''recent'' circumstances, but had a lucid memory as to events that had occurred in ''early life''; in fact, impressions that had long been forgotten were again revived. As this patient recovered his bodily health, a singular alteration was observed in the character of his memory. He again recollected ''recent'' ideas, but entirely forgot all the events of past years.”}}

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The ''Materialistic Theory of Memory.'' – According to this theory Memory, like all other mental functions, is the result of the vibrations of nerve-cells, and may be expressed in terms of matter and motion. When a stimulus from the Object World sets up a vibration in a sense-organ, that vibration is propagated as a wave from cell to cell of the nervous chain till it reaches its appropriate centre in the cerebrum. There arises the perception, the outcome of ''mental'' activity. This nervous action, once set up, tends to repeat itself more easily with each similar stimulus, the nervous energy following the path of least resistance, and each recurrence of the similar vibration making easier further repetition. Such a vibration having once been set up, it may recur in the absence of the external stimulus, and we have the ''idea'' in lieu of the sensation-perception. Whenever the nerve-cells vibrate as they vibrated under the first stimulus, the idea recurs, and this recurrence is termed memory. Now when the vibration is first set up it is at its strongest, and it is argued that this intensity of vibration lessens, until it is not sufficient to affect the consciousness. Mr. James Ward writes (''Journal of'' Speculative Philosophy, vol. xvii. No. 2, quoted by Sully):

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{{Style P-Quote|1=fainter ones be each capable of receiving fresh impulse which may so intensify their motion as to raise them again into consciousness. Now if these vibrations=memory, if we have only matter in motion, we know the laws of dynamics sufficiently well to say that if a body be set vibrating, and new forces be successively brought to act upon it and set up new vibrations, there will not be in that body the co-existence of each separate set of vibrations successively impressed upon it, but it will vibrate in a way differing from each single set and compounded of all. So that memory, as a mode of motion, would not give us the record of the past, but would present us with a new story, the resultant of all those past vibrations, and this would be ever changing, as new impressions, causing new vibrations, come in to modify the resultant of the whole.”}}

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On the other hand, the theory for which I contend leaves the individuality single, varying in its manifestations according to the physical conditions through which it works; and all the strange cases of double consciousness, which have so perplexed the physiologist and the psychologist, together with the phenomena of somnambulism, mesmerism, hypnotism, and similar conditions, fall into line as severally belonging to one of the two states of consciousness, the dream and the waking, the Ego working equally in either but conditioned in turn by each.

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{{Style P-Quote|1=memory is explained by the mere transposition of the psycho-physical threshold with every retreat of the boundary between the sense and the transcendental consciousness. If a forgotten impression sank into a real unconscious, it would not be apparent how in memory this unconscious should suddenly become again conscious. The forgotten, therefore, cannot thereby cease to belong to a consciousness, and since forgetting is the disappearance from the sense-consciousness, we must admit the existence of a second. And so, to say that an impression is forgotten means that it has passed over from the sense-consciousness to the transcendental.”|signature=(Vol. ii. pp. 111-113.)}}