Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 35.djvu/773

 Rh each through its own particular channel of sensation, and are stored up in the brain, each in its particular part of the brain.

Memory is the revival in consciousness of these various memory-pictures.

Imagination is the combination of old pictures into a new image.

Reasoning is the passage of thought from one picture to another, along established lines.

Action is the carrying out of the impulse to whose memory reason has led up.

These are some of the mental faculties, and it is at once evident that they are not distinct entities, like the mental image, but rather powers of the mind to deal with these images; and, therefore, the faculties can not be said to have any particular seat, and can never be located in an area of the brain. Imagination and reasoning power are therefore not to be assigned to bumps on the head, as the old phrenology taught. And even when we speak of memory we distinguish it broadly from the memory-pictures, which do have a location, but one that is wholly different from that taught by Gall. Here, again, we see how far removed from the old phrenology the new phrenology is, and how much more exact in its knowledge. If proofs of these facts are demanded, they are to be found in the study of diseases of memory, as described in Ribot's entertaining little volume. But one or two statements may be made, very briefly, in closing, which must carry conviction to the most skeptical mind.

The reason why it is now accepted that each sense with its memory-pictures has a definite location in the brain distinct from all others, is that it is possible for one sense or one set of memory-pictures to be lost without affecting the others. There are men in apparently perfect health who have suddenly lost all their sight-memory, so that they no longer recognize people or things formerly familiar. One such man did not even know his wife until she spoke to him, when he at once knew her voice. There are men who have in the course of a few moments been deprived of their memory of language, and who, although they could talk and even write, were as incapable of understanding what was said to them or of understanding what they saw on a printed page as one would be of spoken or written Chinese. There are others still who have lost their artistic or musical powers, but in other respects are perfectly sound, so that instead of being able to sketch from memory as formerly they are unable to call up to mind a single memory-picture; and instead of being able to follow or recollect a melody or appreciate the harmonies of music, they are totally deprived of this pleasure, and this without any blindness or deafness excepting of the mind.