Part 2

The Stoics took Plato’s figure of the wax almost literally! They held that the mind is originally a _tabula rasa_. Sensations are the first writing upon this tablet. The object of sensation makes an impression upon the perceiving subject, as the seal impresses the wax. Memory depends upon this impression. This was the view of Zeno. Chrysippus found difficulties in such a crude materialistic theory. How could the mind receive and retain at the same time a number of different and partly incompatible impressions? Accordingly he replaced this view by the theory that the sense impression consists in @a@ qualitative change (ἀλλοίωσις) of the passively receiving organ, the soul.[28] The presentation (φαντασία) is a state of the soul. The relation of memory to the general theory of knowledge with the Stoics was briefly as follows:—The lowest act of the soul is mere perception (αἴσθησις); the next is presentation (φαντασία), which adds conscious observation, its function being to make a first test of the truth of the material furnished by sense. If perception has offered a true picture of the external object, this presenting activity of the mind becomes so intensive that the understanding is brought into action. The understanding or judgment approves or disapproves the presentations. If it approves, there arises the empirical fact, which bears upon it the mark of truth. These facts memory stores up. By combination of the separate facts empirical concepts are formed which make up the treasure of memory or experience.[29]

The psychology of Epicurus and the other atomists was a simple kind of mechanical sensationalism. _Eidola_ or images from external objects enter the soul through the sense organs. The mind stores up a great multitude of these _eidola_. Whenever we call up a picture of memory or of the imagination, we turn the attention to one of these images. Thus the mind sees in the same way that the eye does, with this difference, that it perceives much thinner eidola.[30]

Cicero and Quintilian both dwell upon the importance of memory; and both seem to adopt the common theory of the time, that impressions are stamped on the mind as the signets are marked on wax. They are especially concerned, however, with principles relating to the exercise of memory; and they give instructions for mnemonic aids in oratory. Cicero lays special stress upon order as an aid to memory; and as sight is the most acute of the senses, those things are best remembered which are visualized by the imagination. In accordance with the ancient mnemonic systems he would have these imagined forms localized. The advice of Quintilian in respect to memory is especially sensible. According to him, nothing can take the place of exercise and labor. Next in importance is the division and arrangement of one’s subject. He notices also the importance of good health; and says that for slow minds an interval of rest is a good thing, though he seems to be uncertain whether the advantage is due to the rest, or whether it gives reminiscence time to mature.[31]

IV.

The Neo-Platonic psychology of memory is represented by Plotinus.[32] He discusses the subject at considerable length, and presents a somewhat original doctrine. Memory does not belong to God nor to the divine immutable intelligence in man, which knows by direct intellectual perception. It is a function of the soul and first appears when the world soul is individualized in bodies. Memory, however, has no basis in the physical organism, nor does the soul impress the sensations upon the body. The effects of sensations are not like impressions made by a seal, nor are they reactions (ἀντερείσεις), or configurations (τυπώσεις), but in sense-perception as in thought the soul is active. In memory, too, the soul is active, not passive. The influence of the body proves nothing against this. The changeable nature of the body may cause us to forget, but it cannot condition positive recollection. The body is the river of Lethe, but memory belongs to the soul. The part of the soul to which memory belongs is the image-forming faculty. This holds sense impressions as well as thought. Two souls, the higher and the lower, are concerned in memory. When the soul leaves the body, the recollections of the lower soul are soon forgotten in proportion as the higher soul rises toward the intelligible world.[33]

St. Augustine developed the views of the Neo-Platonists in regard to memory. With him memory is a faculty of animals, men, and angels. God, whose immutable essence is above the sphere of movement and change, does not remember. Everything is seen by him in one indivisible and unchangeable present.

Augustine does not agree with Aristotle that some animals are devoid of memory. He attributes memory even to fishes, and relates in confirmation of this opinion an incident that he had observed. There was a large fountain filled with fishes. People came daily to see them and often fed them. The fishes remembered what they received; and as soon as any one came to the fountain they crowded together expecting their accustomed food. But Augustine does not suppose that animals have that higher memory which is purely intellectual, although he probably failed to see how purely mechanical and involuntary their so-called acts of memory are. Memory with St. Augustine, as in the psychology of Plotinus, is a function of the soul, not of the body. But @with@ Aristotle @he@ refers it to the central sense.[34]

What is memory? It is thinking of what one knows. All the various modifications of the soul cannot all be present to us at once. There is a difference between knowing a thing and thinking of it. The musician, says Augustine, knows music, but he does not think of it when he is talking about Geometry.[35] The ideas relating to music are in the mind in a latent state. Augustine anticipates Leibnitz in discussing the unconscious modifications of our ¬own¬ ideas; but he speaks especially of their gradual decay, while Leibnitz considers the unconscious growth of them. “Many numbers”,[36] Augustine says, “are gradually effaced from memory; for they remain not an instant unaltered. Indeed what is not found in memory after a year is somewhat diminished even after one day. But this diminution is imperceptible; yet it is not wrongly inferred; for it does not suddenly all vanish the day before the year is up. Hence we may conclude that from the moment it was engraved in memory it began to slip away.”[37] This doctrine of unconscious mental changes and unconscious mental states is one of the most remarkable features of Augustine’s psychology. With irresistible logic he demonstrates the existence of such states in the following passage from another place:—

“But what when the memory itself loses anything, as falls out when we forget and seek that we may recollect? Where, in the end, do we search, but in the memory itself? And there, if one thing be, perchance, offered instead of another, we reject it, until what we seek meets us; and when it doth we say ‘This is it’; which we should not unless we recognized it, nor recognize it, unless we remembered it——For we do not believe it as something new, but upon recollection, allow what was named to be right. But were it utterly blotted out of the mind, we should not remember it, even when reminded. For we have not as yet utterly forgotten that which we remember ourselves to have forgotten. What, then, we have utterly forgotten, though lost, we cannot even seek after.”[38] It would not be difficult to find passages in modern psychologies that read almost like translations of this chapter of Augustine’s Confessions.

Two kinds of memory—sense memory and intellectual memory are distinguished in the Augustinian psychology. The former preserves and reproduces not only the images of visible objects, but also the impressions of sounds, odors and other objects which strike our senses.[39] The images are not like the _eidola_ of Democritus, but are ideal, formed by the mind from its own essence. Intellectual memory contains our knowledge of the sciences, of literature, and dialectic, and of the questions relating to these subjects.[40] This memory, unlike the memory of sense, contains not the images of things, but the things themselves. These ideas which the intellectual memory stores up are in a sense innate. They never came to us through the senses. They could never have been taught to us, unless we had already had them in our memories. “When I learned them I gave not credit to another man’s mind, but recognized them in mine.” Thus the memory contains the idea of truth and of God.

Augustine points out, too, what has been repeated by Locke and others until it has become a platitude, that we do not remember objects themselves, but the ideas which we have gained from them. And with his usual subtlety he shows that much of what is ordinarily attributed to perception is really the work of memory.

“We see what importance St. Augustine attaches to memory. It is in his view the faculty which preserves the ideas relating @not@ only to the body, but to the soul, not only to eternal truths, but to the Eternal Being himself——. This memory, which is peculiar to man, and which animals do not possess—this memory, which in a mysterious manner contains in it intelligible realities, is, according to the Bishop of Hippo, one of the three great faculties of man, and the origin of the other two. It is from it that intelligence arises, and the will proceeds from the one to the other and unites them. Thus, if it is allowed to compare things human with things divine, we have in us an image of the august Trinity. Memory, in which is the matter of knowledge, and which is as the place of intelligible things, offers some resemblance to the Father; the intellect, which is derived ¬from¬ and formed from it, is not without analogy to the Son; and love or will, which unites the intelligible (or memory) to the intellect has a certain resemblance to the Holy Spirit.”[41] The phenomena of memory were also important with Augustine as weapons against materialism. By memory the soul knows objects of sense when it no longer perceives them, and, moreover, combines the heterogeneous in ways inexplicable by means of a phys¬ch¬ical substance. And again the soul can form abstract conceptions of space and mathematical truths.

The well-known conditions of a good memory, such as acuteness of sensation, order, and repetition, Augustine notices only incidentally. More attention is given to the relation of the will to memory and to the association of ideas.

Whether we remember or not depends upon the will. By an act of will we avert the memory from sense-perceptions, as, for example, when we hear a speaker and do not notice what he says, or read a page and do not know what we have read, or walk with our attention upon something else. In all these cases we perceive, but do not remember our perceptions. So, too, recollection depends upon the will: “As the will applies the @sense to the@ body (or external object), so it applies the memory to the sense, and the eye of the mind of the thinker to the memory.”[42]

This power of the will over memory is, however, limited by the association of ideas. In order to recall anything by a voluntary effort we must remember the general notion of the thing or some associated idea. “For example, if I wish to remember what I supped on yesterday, either I have already remembered that I did sup, or if not yet this, at least, I have remembered something about that time itself, if nothing else; at all events, I have remembered yesterday and that part of yesterday in which people usually sup, and what supping is.”[43] In another place he says that, of a series of ideas the lost part is recovered “by the part whereof we had hold.”

Many since Augustine have marvelled at the miracle of memory. None have expressed their admiration more eloquently. “Great is this force of memory”, he exclaims, “excessive great, O my God; a large and boundless chamber; who ever sounded the bottom thereof? Yet is this a power of mine, and belongs unto my nature; nor do I myself comprehend all that I am. Therefore is the mind too strait to contain itself. And where should that be which it containeth, not of itself? Is it without and not within? How then doth it not comprehend itself. A wonderful admiration surprises me, amazement seizes me upon this. And men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty billows of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, and pass themselves by; nor wonder that when I spake of all these things, I did not see them with my eyes, yet could not have spoken of them, unless I then actually saw the mountains, billows, rivers, stars, which I had seen, and that ocean which I believe to be inwardly in my memory, and that, with the vast spaces between, as if I saw them abroad. Yet did not I by seeing draw them into myself, when with mine eyes I beheld them; nor are they themselves with me, but their images only. And I know by what sense of the body, each was impressed upon me.”

It is an interesting fact that Augustine noticed the possibility of illusions of memory. Certain rare phenomena—the so-called recollections of Pythagoras and others who were said to have remembered objects perceived in a former state of existence—he explains in a very modern fashion, except that he attributes @these@ beliefs to the agency of evil spirits. “For we must not”, he says, “acquiesce in their story who assert that the Samian Pythagoras recollected some things of this kind, which he had experienced when he was previously here in another body; and others @tell@ yet of others, that they experienced something of the same sort in their minds. But it may be conjectured that these were untrue recollections, such as we commonly experience in sleep, when we fancy we remember, as though we had done or seen it, when we never did or saw at all; and that the minds of these persons, even though awake, were affected in this way at the suggestion of malicious and deceitful spirits, whose care it is to confirm, or to sow some false belief concerning the changes of souls, in order to deceive men.”[44] If they truly remembered such things, he argues, such phenomena would not be as rare; but many persons would experience the same.

Perhaps the most serious criticism of Augustine’s psychology of memory is that he entirely neglects the physiological side of the subject. He does not even notice the relation of memory to states of health or disease, and of youth or age. In one place, however, he states that memory has its seat in one of the three ventricles of the brain, which is situated between that which is the seat of sensation and that which presides @over@ ¬of¬ locomotion, so that our movements may be coordinated.[45]

The criticism has also been made that Augustine seems to waver in his conception of memory, that he sometimes represents it as the source of all our intellectual activity comparing it among the other faculties to the Father in the Trinity; that again he seems to limit this faculty to the work of preserving knowledge acquired empirically. Certainly in some passages he seems to make memory contain a kind of innate ideas that may be drawn forth by suggestion.[46]

But if Augustine is unsatisfactory in this, it must be remembered that he is not writing a psychology and that he was, as Ferraz calls him, a philosopher of transition. “He combats Plato’s doctrine of reminiscence, and prepares the way for the innate ideas of Descartes, without positively enough rejecting the former, and without clearly enough admitting the latter.”[47]

V.

The pathological side of memory seems to have been little studied by the ancients. Augustine referred to the possibility of illusions of memory in the way already mentioned. Seneca tells of a certain Sabinus who had so bad a memory that he forgot the name of Ulysses, and again of Achilles, and sometimes of Priam, though he knew them as well as we remember our schoolmasters.[48] Some remarkable cases of amnesia were reported to the Elder Pliny. “Nothing whatever in man,” he says, “is of so frail a nature as the memory; for it is affected by disease, by injuries, and even by fright; being sometimes partially lost and at @other@ times entirely so. A man who received a blow from a stone forgot the names of the letters (of the alphabet) only; while, on the other hand, another person, who fell from a very high roof could not so much as recollect his mother or his relations and neighbors. Another person in consequence of some disease forgot his own servants even; and Messala Corvinus, the orator, lost all recollection of his own name.”[49] While these cases are good illustrations of certain diseases of memory, they are not reported with sufficient accuracy and detail to render them of much scientific value. Ancient thinkers appear not to have seen the importance of studying the pathological conditions of memory.

VI.

No historical sketch of memory among the ancient Greeks and Romans is complete without some mention of their mnemonic systems. The art of mnemonics seems to have been much in vogue among them. There are frequent allusions to this art in the works of Aristotle, Plato, and other classic writers. Aristotle is reported by some to have written a work upon mnemonics. Every scholar of the classics is familiar with the story that ascribes the invention of the art to Simonides.

The main principles of the ancient mnemonic systems according to Cicero and Quintilian were as follows. The thing to be remembered was localized by the imagination in some definite place—say in a room of a real or imaginary house; and, if necessary, a concrete symbol as vivid as possible was associated with it. This method was used by the Romans as an aid in oratory; and it has been said that the phrases, “_in the first place_,” “_in the second place_,” and the like, originated in this ancient practice.

The ancient systems of mnemonics are inferior to the best modern systems, that, @since@ the days of Pick[50] have been based upon sound psychological principles. But the ancient systems were probably very helpful @to@ eye-minded people. The men with remarkable memories, mentioned by Cicero and other ancient writers very likely owed much to mnemonic aids. It is of special psychological interest to consider the ancient mnemonic devices in the light of such studies as those of Galton upon mental imagery, number forms, and the like.[51] The high estimate that many of the ancients placed upon the mnemonic art, may, perhaps, fairly be taken as evidence that what Galton calls the faculty of visualisation was developed among them. Especially some of the Roman orators seem to have possessed this faculty in a high degree.

Biographical Note of the Author.

I was born at Dunbarton, N.H. on the 3d of Dec. 1855, and am the youngest son of Samuel and Hannah Dane Burnham. I graduated at the High School at Manchester, N.H. in 1875. The next three years I spent in teaching and in study. In 1878 I entered Harvard College, and graduated in the Class of ’82. The following year was spent in teaching in the Preparatory Department of Wittenberg College. The next two years were spent at the State Normal School at Potsdam, N.Y., where my work was the teaching of Latin and Rhetoric. In 1885 I entered the Johns Hopkins University. In this university I have held the positions of Fellow in Philosophy and Fellow by Courtesy. My work has been chiefly under the direction of Prof. G. Stanley Hall and Dr. Richard T. Ely.

William Henry Burnham.

FOOTNOTES:

Footnote 1:

For reference see Carus: Geschichte der Psychologie, pp. 150 & 169.

Footnote 2:

Theophrastus, 45.

Footnote 3:

Theophrastus, 4. Cf. Siebeck: Geschichte der Psychologie. Erste Abtheilung, p. 150.

Footnote 4:

Phaedrus, 73.

Footnote 5:

Philebus, 34.

Footnote 6:

Jowett’s Translation.

Footnote 7:

For references see Zeller’s Plato and the Older Academy, pp. 126 and 407. Cf. also Siebeck: Geschichte der Psychologie.

Footnote 8:

For the many passages in which the words μνήμη, μνημονεύω, μνημονικος, μημων μ@ν@ήμων occur in Plato, ¬conf¬ see _Ast_. _Lexicon Platonicum_, II. pp. 356–357. For ἀναμιμνήσκω and ἀνάμνησις cf. the same, Vol. I. pp. 151–152.

Footnote 9:

De Memoria et Reminiscentia. For a list of commentaries, see Hamilton’s edition of Reid’s Works, p. 891.

Footnote 10:

Touch and Taste according to A. reside in the heart. Sight, Sound, and Smell in the brain, but they are indirectly connected with the heart.

Footnote 11:

De Somno. 1. 454.

ἡ δὲ λεγομένη αἴσθησις ὡς ἐνέργεια κίνησίς τις διὰ τοῦ σώματος τῆς ψυχῆς ἐστιν.

Footnote 12:

See Wallace; Aristotle’s Psychology, Introduction, pp. 93 & 94.

Footnote 13:

In other words, abstract ideas and the like are reproducible only so far as they imply images.

Footnote 14:

Quoted from G. H. Lewes’s work on Aristotle, p. 257.

Footnote 15:

Συμβαίνουσι δ’ αἱ ἀναμνήσεις, ἐπειδὴ πέφυκεν ἡ κίνησις ἥδε γενέσθαι μετὰ τήνδε. This passage is obscure, but it is generally understood to refer to the sequence of motions or the corresponding ideas, and this interpretation agrees with the context. See Hamilton’s Edition of Reid, pp. 892–893, and Themistius’ paraphrase of De Memoria, quoted by Hamilton, p. 893–894; also Siebeck, Geschichte der Psychologie, Zweite Abtheilung, p. 77; Grote’s Aristotle, p. 215; Grant’s Aristotle, p. 170; Wallace’s Aristotle’s Psychology, Introduction, p. 95.

Footnote 16:

Cf. Siebeck, Geschichte der Psychologie, Zweite Abtheilung, p. 77.

Footnote 17:

The Greek is as follows:

διὸ καὶ τὸ ἐφεξῆς θηρεύομεν νοήσαντες ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν ἢ ἄλλου τινὸς καὶ αφ’ ὁμοίου, ἢ ἐναντίου, ἢ τοῦ σύνεγγυς διὰ τοῦτο γίνεται ἡ ἀνάμνησις. αἱ γὰρ κινήσεις τούτων τῶν μὲν αἱ αὐταί, τῶν δ’ ἅμα, τῶν δὲ μέρος ἔχουσιν ὥστε τὸ λοιπὸν μικρὸν ὃ ἐκινήθη μετ’ ἐκεῖνο.

Footnote 18:

p. 95.

Footnote 19:

@See also@ Grote, Grant, Siebeck, and Zeller: ¬see¬ opp. cit.

Footnote 20:

Hamilton’s emendation is as follows:

After ἢ ἄλλου τινὸς in the passage cited he would supply χρόνου or καιροῦ.

Footnote 21:

Quoted by Hamilton in his edition of Reid’s Works, p. 901.

Footnote 22:

Hamilton’s translation. Edition of Reid’s Works, Vol. II. p. 909.

Footnote 23:

Grote, op. cit. p.

Footnote 24:

Wallace: Aristotle’s Psychology, p. 41.

Footnote 25:

Siebeck: op. cit., pp. 78–79.

Footnote 26:

Bain: Senses and Intellect, p. 338. 3d American ed.

Footnote 27:

For passages where the words μνήμη, ἀνάμνησις, etc., occur in Aristotle see the Index in the Berlin edition of Aristotle’s works, Vol. V. In addition to the works cited see also Waddington-Kastus; De la psychologie d’Aristote, Chap. XIII.

Footnote 28:

For reference see Siebeck’s Geschichte der Psychologie, p. 209. See also Ueberweg, History of Philosophy, Vol. I. p. 193.

Footnote 29:

Cf. Stein; Die Erkenntnisstheorie der Stoa: Zeller; Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics: and Ueberweg; Hist. of Philos. loc. cit.

Footnote 30:

Lucretius, IV. 75 seqq.

Footnote 31:

Cicero, De Oratore, II. 86 seq.

Quintilian, Instit. orat. XI. 2 seq.

Footnote 32:

Cf. Enn. IV. L. III. C. XXV. XXX and L. VI.

Footnote 33:

Cf. Siebeck: Geschichte der Psychologie, II. p. 314 seq.

Footnote 34:

The central sense or sensorium, however, according to Augustine is located in the brain, not in the heart as in Aristotle’s psychology.

Footnote 35:

De Trin. L. XIV. C. VII. See also Ferraz,—Psych. de St. Augustin, 2^{nd} ed.

Footnote 36:

Augustine does not mean to limit what follows to mathematical truths, but according to @his@ psychology the same would be true of anything that we are liable to forget.

Footnote 37:

De Musica, L. VI. C. IV.

Footnote 38:

Conf. L. X. C. XIX. Pusey’s translation.

Footnote 39:

Conf. L. X. C. VIII.