Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/318

306 And it is not a little significant that the basis of such Memories appears capable of being laid at a very early period of life; as in the two following cases, of which the first is recorded by Dr. Abercrombie, while the second was mentioned to me by the subject of it:

"A lady, in the last stage of chronic disease, was carried from London to a lodging in the country. There her infant daughter was taken to visit her, and, after a short interview, carried back to town. The lady died a few days after, and the daughter grew up without any recollection of her mother, till she was of mature age. At this time she happened to be taken into the room in which her mother died, without knowing it to have been so. She started on entering it, and, when a friend who was with her asked the cause of her agitation, replied, 'I have a distinct impression of having been in this room before, and that a lady who lay in that corner, and seemed very ill, leaned over me and wept.'"—(Inquiries concerning the Intellectual Powers, fifth edition, p. 120.)

"Several years ago, the Rev. S. Hansard, now Rector of Bethnal Green, was doing clerical duty for a time at Hurstmonceaux, in Sussex; and, while there, he one day went over with a party of friends to Pevensey Castle, which he did not remember to have ever previously visited. As he approached the gate-way, he became conscious of a very vivid impression of having seen it before; and he 'seemed to himself to see,' not only the gate-way itself, but donkeys beneath the arch, and people on the top of it. His conviction that he must have visited the Castle on some former occasion, although he had neither the slightest remembrance of such a visit, nor any knowledge of having ever been in the neighborhood previously to his residence at Hurstmonceaux, made him inquire from his mother if she could throw any light on the matter. She at once informed him that being in that part of the country when he was about eighteen months old, she had gone over with a large party, and had taken him in the pannier of a donkey; that the elders of the party, having brought lunch with them, had eaten it on the roof of the gate-way, where they would have been seen from below, while he had been left on the ground with the attendants and donkeys.—This case is remarkable for the vividness of the Sensorial impression (it may be worth mentioning that Mr. Hansard has a decidedly artistic temperament), and for the reproduction of details which were not likely to have been brought up in conversation, even if the subject of them had happened to hear the visit mentioned as an event of his childhood; and of such mention he has no remembrance whatever."

Now, there is very strong reason to believe that what is described as a storing-up of Ideas in the Memory is the Psychological expression of Physical changes in the Cerebrum, by which Ideational states are permanently registered or recorded; so that the "traces" left by them, although remaining so long outside the "sphere of consciousness" as to have seemed non-existent, may be revived again in full vividness under certain special conditions—just as the invisible impression left upon the sensitive paper of the Photographer is "developed" into a picture by the application of particular chemical substances. It must be freely admitted that we have at present no certain knowledge of the precise mode in which this record is effected; but, looking at the manner in which the Sensori-motor apparatus, which