Présentation de l'éditeur
Excerpt from Diseases of Memory, Diseases of the Will, and Diseases of Personality
Thus understood, our study involves a general physiology and psychology of memory, and at the same time its pathology. The disorders and diseases of this faculty, when classified and interpreted, are no longer an assemblage of curious facts and amusing anecdotes to be mentioned only incidentally: on the contrary, they are seen to be subject to certain laws which constitute the very groundwork of memory and which reveal its mechanism.
In the common acceptation of the word, memory includes three things, viz.: the retention of certain states; their reproduction; their localization in the past. This, however, is only one kind of memory, and it may be designated perfect. These three elements are of unequal value: the first two are necessary, indispensable; the third, that which, in the language of the schools, i, called "recollection," gives completeness to memory, but does not constitute it. Do away with the first two, and memory is abolished: suppress the third, and memory ceases to exist for itself, without ceasing to exist in itself. Hence this third element, which is purely psychological, appears as superadded to the others: they are permanent; it is instable, appearing and disappearing; it represents what consciousness may claim as its own in the fact of memory, and nothing more.
If we study memory as it has been studied down to our time, as a "faculty of the soul," with the aid of the sensus intimus (consciousness) alone, we must of necessity recognize in this perfect and conscious phase all that there is in memory; nevertheless that were, under the influence of a faulty method, to take a part for the whole, or rather the species for the genus. Some authors of our day - Huxley, Clifford, Maudsley, and others, - by maintaining that consciousness is only the accompaniment of some nervous processes, and that it is as incapable of reacting upon them as is a shado...
Présentation de l'éditeur
Thus understood, our study involves a general physiology and psychology of memory, and at the same time its pathology. The disorders and diseases of this faculty, when classified and interpV eted, are no longer an assemblage of curious facts and amusing anecdotes to be mentioned only incidentally: on the contrary, they are seen to be subject to certain laws which constitute the very groundwork of memory and which reveal its mechanism. I. In the common acceptation of the word, memory includes three things, viz.: the retention of certain states; their reproduction; their localization in the past. This, however, is only one kind of memory, and it may be designated perfect. These three elements are of unequal value: the first two are necessary, indispensable; the third, that which, in the language of the schools, i, called recollection, gives completeness to memory, but does not constitute it. Do away with the first two, and memory is abolished: suppress the third, and memory ceases to exist for itself, without ceasing to exist in itself. Hence this third element, which is purely psychological, appears as superadded to the others: they are permanent; it is instable, appearing and disappearing; it represents what consciousness may claim as its own in the fact of memory, and nothing more. If we study memory as it has been studied down to our time, as a faculty of the soul, with the aid of the sensus intimus (consciousness) alone, we must of necessity recognize in this perfect and conscious phase all that there is in memory; nevertheless that were, under the influence of a faulty method, to take a part for the whole, or rather the species for the genus. Some authors of our day Huxley, Clifford, Maudsley, and others, by maintaining that consciousness is only the accompaniment of some nervous processes, and that it is as incapable of reacting upon them as is a shadow
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)
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