Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 13.djvu/338

MEMORY. then more and more slowly. The influence of length of series, order, repetition, rhythm, etc., was also studied. Ebbinghaus's method has been repeated with many modifications. Other subjects related to memory which have been investigated are the character of the stimulus, combination of sense modalities, association and arrangement, the effects of disease, of age, race, and individual differences. The present tendency is away from quantitative determinations of capacity and toward a qualitative analysis of the memorial consciousness. The part played by feeling and mood, and the characteristics of the image, are, e.g. attracting more attention than the answer to the question “How much can one remember of an event after an interval of an hour or a day?”



From Titchener, Experimental Psychology.

Each sense-department has its own memory. There are, i.e. auditory, visual, tactual, gustatory ‘memories,’ and not one single ‘memory.’ The manner in which these memories are combined in a single mind is known as the individual's ‘memory type’ or ‘ideational type.’ There are four chief memory types: visual (predominance of ‘picture-ideas’), auditory (predominance of ‘sound-ideas’), tactual or motor (predominance of ‘touch’ and ‘strain-ideas’), and a mixed type in which the various sense memories are more or less evenly balanced. When ‘object-images’ pass into ‘word-images’ three subtypes are formed: verbal-visual, verbal-auditory, and verbal-tactual; i.e. words are seen, heard, or felt in the throat. In most minds there are several memories, with one (usually the visual) appearing in excess of the others. See.

The systematic attempt to improve the efficiency of memory is known as the art of mnemonics, which is said to have originated with the Greek poet Simonides. Most mnemonic devices include the formation of artificial associations as an aid to recollection. A common device for remembering dates, e.g., is the association of the digits with letters. Then the letters corresponding to the figures in a date are brought together in a word which is associated, in turn, with the event whose date is to be retained.

Memory is subject to many disturbances or ‘diseases,’ most of which fall under the head of amnesia, or ‘loss of memory.’ Amnesia may be either general or partial. In general amnesia, a greater part of memory disappears, (1) temporarily, as in epilepsy, or (2) periodically, as in altered personality, or (3) progressively (e.g. proper names are forgotten before adjectives and verbs). Partial amnesia covers loss of memory for colors, sounds, numbers, proper names, etc. (See ). A less frequent disorder of memory is hypermnesia, or exaltation of memory. A person's general memory, or his memory for a language or for some event of his childhood, is remarkably clarified. Finally come illusions of memory, or paramnesias, in which the subject believes that a new experience has been passed through before (illusion of familiarity), or assigns to a recent date experiences which have occurred at a remote time.

. Külpe, Outlines of Psychology (London and New York, 1895); Titchener, Primer of Psychology (New York and London, 1899); Fuller, Art of Memory (Saint Paul, 1898); Wundt, Physiologische Psychologie (4th ed., Leipzig, 1885); Ebbinghaus, Ueber das Gedächtniss (Leipzig, 1885); Sully, Human Mind (London, 1892); Hering, Ueber das Gedächtniss als eine allgemeine Function der organischen Materie (2d ed., Vienna, 1876); Ferrier, Functions of the Brain (2d ed., New York, 1886); Ribot, Diseases of Memory (New York, 1882); Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty (London, 1883); James, Principles of Psychology (New York, 1890); Fechner, Elemente der Psychophysik (2d ed., Leipzig, 1889).  MEM′PHIS. A city of ancient Egypt, situated about 12 miles south of modern Cairo, on the left bank of the Nile (Map:, E 3). It is said to have been founded by Menes, the first historical King of ancient Egypt, but this is as little probable as the statement in Herodotus that Menes gained the ground for building Memphis by diking off the Nile. King Uchoreus, whom Diodorus calls the founder of Memphis, cannot be identified. It is certain that a city called ‘the White Wall’ stood on the spot from prehistoric times; this name (Leukon Teichos) was still attached to the citadel and the neighboring quarter of Memphis in the Greek epoch. The kings of the Fourth to the Sixth Dynasty built their residences not very far from Memphis, and their pyramids are in the vicinity, but Memphis proper received its name and importance from the second King of the Sixth Dynasty (Pepy or Apopi I.), who built his pyramid and residence not far west of the small ancient city of ‘the White Wall.’ The name of that pyramid, Men-nofer, ‘good abode,’ extended to the whole city, and, corrupted to Menfe, came down to the classical writers. In the seventh century the Assyrians called the city Mempi; in the Bible the name has been corrupted to Moph and Noph. Memphis, which had a very favorable situation, near the head of the Delta, became the capital of Egypt. In later times, several dynasties preferred other capitals, but Memphis always remained at least the second capital of Egypt, and the second city of the land in wealth and population. The conquests by the Ethiopians, Assyrians, and