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Page 29
XII. MEMORY
We are following a somewhat arbitrary order. Since each and every
faculty we possess is either in whole or in part a resultant of the play
of our associations, it would have been as natural, after treating of
association, to treat of memory as to treat of interest and attention
next. But, since we did take the latter operations first, we must take
memory now without farther delay; for the phenomena of memory are among
the simplest and most immediate consequences of the fact that our mind
is essentially an associating machine. There is no more pre-eminent
example for exhibiting the fertility of the laws of association as
principles of psychological analysis. Memory, moreover, is so important
a faculty in the schoolroom that you are probably waiting with some
eagerness to know what psychology has to say about it for your help.
In old times, if you asked a person to explain why he came to be
remembering at that moment some particular incident in his previous
life, the only reply he could make was that his soul is endowed with a
faculty called memory; that it is the inalienable function of this
faculty to recollect; and that, therefore, he necessarily at that moment
must have a cognition of that portion of the past. This explanation by a
'faculty' is one thing which explanation by association has superseded
altogether. If, by saying we have a faculty of memory, you mean nothing
more than the fact that we can remember, nothing more than an abstract
name for our power inwardly to recall the past, there is no harm done:
we do have the faculty; for we unquestionably have such a power. But if,
by faculty, you mean a principle of _explanation of our general power to
recall_, your psychology is empty. The associationist psychology, on the
other hand, gives an explanation of each particular fact of
recollection; and, in so doing, it also gives an explanation of the
general faculty. The 'faculty' of memory is thus no real or ultimate
explanation; for it is itself explained as a result of the association
of ideas.
Nothing is easier than to show you just what I mean by this. Suppose I
am silent for a moment, and then say in commanding accents: "Remember!
Recollect!" Does your faculty of memory obey the order, and reproduce
any definite image from your past? Certainly not. It stands staring into
vacancy, and asking, "What kind of a thing do you wish me to remember?"
It needs in short, a _cue_. But, if I say, remember the date of your
birth, or remember what you had for breakfast, or remember the
succession of notes in the musical scale; then your faculty of memory
immediately produces the required result: the _'cue'_ determines its
vast set of potentialities toward a particular point. And if you now
look to see how this happens, you immediately perceive that the cue is
something _contiguously associated_ with the thing recalled. The words,
'date of my birth,' have an ingrained association with a particular
number, month, and year; the words, 'breakfast this morning,' cut off
all other lines of recall except those which lead to coffee and bacon
and eggs; the words, 'musical scale,' are inveterate mental neighbors of
do, r�, mi, fa, sol, la, etc. The laws of association govern, in fact,
all the trains of our thinking which are not interrupted by sensations
breaking on us from without. Whatever appears in the mind must be
_introduced_; and, when introduced, it is as the associate of something
already there. This is as true of what you are recollecting as it is of
everything else you think of.
Reflection will show you that there are peculiarities in your memory
which would be quite whimsical and unaccountable if we were forced to
regard them as the product of a purely spiritual faculty. Were memory
such a faculty, granted to us solely for its practical use, we ought to
remember easiest whatever we most _needed_ to remember; and frequency of
repetition, recency, and the like, would play no part in the matter.
That we should best remember frequent things and recent things, and
forget things that are ancient or were experienced only once, could only
be regarded as an incomprehensible anomaly on such a view. But if we
remember because of our associations, and if these are (as the
physiological psychologists believe) due to our organized brain-paths,
we easily see how the law of recency and repetition should prevail.
Paths frequently and recently ploughed are those that lie most open,
those which may be expected most easily to lead to results. The laws of
our memory, as we find them, therefore are incidents of our
associational constitution; and, when we are emancipated from the
flesh, it is conceivable that they may no longer continue to obtain.
We may assume, then, that recollection is a resultant of our associative
processes, these themselves in the last analysis being most probably due
to the workings of our brain.
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