Memory and the Brain

Extract

Memory is an attractive theme, and one on which it is important that just views should prevail. It seems, however, that there is too much inexactness in the views which are commonly entertained about memory. It is generally supposed to be a repository, or something analogous to a tablet, which receives or retains impressions. Now, these notions, when the facts of the case are minutely investigated, fall short, in many respects, of the truth. This may be partly accounted for by the difficulty which, at first, invariably exists to find words to express mental operations, for men, at the outset, are forced to use, in an analogical sense, words already associated with physical phenomena, in order to designate those of mind. When, therefore, we speak of memory as a receptacle of impressions, after the manner of a tablet, we may perhaps mean no more than this, that there is some kind of analogy between memory and a tablet. Allowing that there is truth in what is here stated, it nevertheless seems that the words which are usually chosen to describe the phenomena of memory, are intended to convey the idea that knowledge exists in the mind in a latent condition, that it resides there even when it is not manifest in the form of consciousness or cognition, and to deny this will be deemed a grave error by some, and, indeed, present a paradoxical air to all. But let us examine the facts of the case.