Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/126

114 It was not possible in any of the cases in which the point was mentioned to fix the time of the incident recollected, except it was related to other events, the date of which was learned afterward. Thus, a scene is remembered that took place in a certain house; it subsequently appears that the parents left that house when the subject was three years old, and the conclusion is drawn that the event occurred before that age. It also seems impossible to fix the date relatively, or, in other words, of several events recollected, to determine the order in which they happened. Thus, M. Binet furnishes a list of twelve events remembered which took place when he was perhaps less than six years of age, most of which acted on the emotions, and which he believes are remembered because of the feeling they excited. He remarks that the memories form complete detailed visual pictures, in which he sees the persons and their positions, and even trifling things like the stones in the wall in one of them. But he is not able to fix their order, or to say this one happened before that one, except in the case of three, which he has localized in time without knowing how.

The answers are unanimous concerning the conditions under which these recollections of infancy come to mind. They are recalled when we are thinking of our childhood, or of the places where we lived in childhood, or when we meet the names of persons who were concerned with us at that period, or when we see a thing or a scene similar to one which formed a part of the event recollected. In some persons the event is recalled by an emotional condition like the one we felt when it happened—in all these cases by some form of association by resemblance or contiguity.

In most persons a considerable interval exists between the first and second recollections; it is generally more than a year; in some cases it reaches five years; and in a few instances it is only a month or two, in which cases the subject does not know which is first or second. After the first, many isolated facts and scenes are usually remembered, but not in any known chronological order, and without connection with one another. Usually our connected recollections and power to recall our life in chronological order begin at the more advanced age of between seven and eleven years; and with many persons the period coincides with some change in the life, such as a removal of residence, entry into the lyceum, or something of the kind.

The characteristics of the posterior recollections are the same as those of the earlier ones—emotional, visual, presenting themselves as complete pictures with many secondary details, and corresponding to events of short duration; while auditive images are rare, but less so than in the earliest recollection.