Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/621

Rh With this his visual apperception and memory gave way. The scenes of his daily walks seemed strange; if asked to picture a certain spot, he was unable to do so; the attempt to draw a church-spire resulted in a rude, childish scrawl. Later on, the familiar scenes of his childhood faded from his memory; he could not picture the appearance of his wife and child, and even failed to recognize his own image in a mirror. In order to keep up his literary tastes, everything had to be read out loud to him; he had to cultivate his little-used auditory center. He now no longer dreamed of seeing, but of hearing. In short, without impairment of vision or of general intelligence, his excellent visualizing powers faded out, and he was left dependent upon his auditory center. By nature a strong "visionaire," disease forced him to become an "auditaire."

In sensory aphasia, cases occur in which the patient can not understand spoken words; he may be able to speak himself, can write, and has no defect of hearing. But the power to apperceive, to get the meaning out of sounds, is lost. The same may happen to the function of the motor sense in written language. In a typical case the patient suddenly lost all power to write; he had no paralysis, could read manuscript, could talk and hear. But the knowledge of the movements necessary to form the letters had dropped from his mind. If the disease progresses, he may lose the knowledge of all those little gestures and facial expressions that fill the gaps of social intercourse. In these cases—and more varieties could be added—we have clearly illustrated the distinctness of each of these sensory faculties, and of the various degrees of importance they assume in different minds.

It will doubtless have occurred to many a reader that this natural difference of faculty has a practical, an educational aspect. If each one can best absorb his mental food in a certain way, a knowledge of the nature of this peculiarity is certainly desirable. An absence of this knowledge is certain to bring about waste of energy, and especially so as these differences are already apparent in early youth, when a proper recognition of them can do something to remove the unnecessary friction of school-room methods. Dr. J. Mortimer-Granville has clearly grasped the practical aspect of this principle in his primer on "The Secret of a Good Memory." The leading note of that essay is the necessity of finding out the sensory bent of one's memory, and following out the clew thus gained. An eye-minded person should read, should reduce everything to visual terms; and it is because of the common occurrence of this trait that such mnemonic systems as associate everything with a certain spot on a general scheme have been successful. To an "auditaire" they would be worse than useless. The latter must have things read to him; will gain much