Illusions - James Sully (online e reader .txt) 📗

the reflection that this seemingly perfect instrument of intuitive insight is, in reality, like that of introspection, in process of being fashioned. Mutual comprehension has only become necessary since man entered the social state, and this, to judge by the evolutionist's measure of time, is not so long ago. A mental structure so complex and delicate requires for its development a proportionate degree of exercise, and it is not reasonable to look yet for perfect precision of action. Nevertheless, we may hope that, with the advance of social development, the faculty is continually gaining in precision and certainty. And, indeed, this hope is already assured to us in the fact that the faculty has begun to criticise itself, to distinguish between an erroneous and a true form of its-operation. In fact, all that has been here said about illusions of insight has involved the assumption that intellectual culture sharpens the power and makes it less liable to err. CHAPTER X. ILLUSIONS OF MEMORY.

Thus far we have been dealing with Presentative Illusions, that is to say, with the errors incident to the process of what may roughly be called presentative cognition. We have now to pass to the consideration of Representative Illusion, or that kind of error which attends representative cognition in so far as it is immediate or self-sufficient, and not consciously based on other cognition. Of such immediate representative cognition, memory forms the most conspicuous and most easily recognized variety. Accordingly, I proceed to take up the subject of the Illusions of Memory.[111]

The mystery of memory lies in the apparent immediateness of the mind's contact with the vanished past. In "looking back" on our life, we seem to ourselves for the moment to rise above the limitations of time, to undo its work of extinction, seizing again the realities which its on-rushing stream had borne far from us. Memory is a kind of resurrection of the buried past: as we fix our retrospective glance on it, it appears to start anew into life; forms arise within our minds which, we feel sure, must faithfully represent the things that were. We do not ask for any proof of the fidelity of this dramatic representation of our past history by memory. It is seen to be a faithful imitation, just because it is felt to be a revival of the past. To seek to make the immediate testimony of memory more sure seems absurd, since all our ways of describing and illustrating this mental operation assume that in the very act of performing it we do recover a part of our seemingly "dead selves."

To challenge the veracity of a person's memory is one of the boldest things one can do in the way of attacking deep-seated conviction. Memory is the peculiar domain of the individual. In going back in recollection to the scenes of other years he is drawing on the secret store-house of his own consciousness, with which a stranger must not intermeddle. To cast doubt on a person's memory is commonly resented as an impertinence, hardly less rude than to question his reading of his own present mental state. Even if the challenger professedly bases his challenge on the testimony of his own memory, the challenged party is hardly likely to allow the right of comparing testimonies. He can in most cases boldly assert that those who differ from him are lacking in his power of recollection. The past, in becoming the past, has, for most people, ceased to be a common object of reference; it has become a part of the individual's own inner self, and cannot be easily dislodged or shaken.

Yet, although people in general are naturally disposed to be very confident about matters of recollection, reflective persons are pretty sure to find out, sooner or later, that they occasionally fall into errors of memory. It is not the philosopher who first hints at the mendacity of memory, but the "plain man" who takes careful note of what really happens in the world of his personal experience. Thus, we hear persons, quite innocent of speculative doubt, qualifying an assertion made on personal recollection by the proviso, "unless my memory has played me false." And even less reflective persons, including many who pride themselves on their excellent memory, will, when sorely pressed, make a grudging admission that they may, after all, be in error. Perhaps the weakest degree of such an admission, and one which allows to the conceding party a semblance of victory, is illustrated in the "last word" of one who has boldly maintained a proposition on the strength of individual recollection, but begins to recognize the instability of his position: "I either witnessed the occurrence or dreamt it." This is sufficient to prove that, with all people's boasting about the infallibility of memory, there are many who have a shrewd suspicion that some of its asseverations will not bear a very close scrutiny.

Psychology of Memory.

In order to understand the errors of memory, we must proceed, as in the case of illusions of perception, by examining a little into the nature of the normal or correct process.

An act of recollection is said by the psychologist to be purely representative in character, whereas perception is partly representative, partly preservative. To recall an object to the mind is to reconstruct the percept in the absence of a sense-impression.[112]

An act of memory is obviously distinguished from one of simple imagination by the presence of a conscious reference to the past. Every recollection is an immediate reapprehension of some past object or event. However vague this reference may be, it must be there to constitute the process one of recollection.

The every-day usages of language do not at first sight seem to consistently observe this distinction. When a boy says, "I remember my lesson," he appears to be thinking of the present only, and not referring to the past. In truth, however, there is a vague reference to the fact of retaining a piece of knowledge through a given interval of time.

Again, when a man says, "I recollect your face," this means, "Your face seems familiar to me." Here again, though there is no definite reference to the past, there is a vague and indefinite one.

It is plain from this definition that recollection is involved in all recognition or identification. Merely to be aware that I have seen a person before implies a minimum exercise of memory. Yet we may roughly distinguish the two actions of perception and recollection in the process of recognition. The mere recognition of an object does not imply the presence of a distinct representative or mnemonic image. In point of fact, in so far as recognition is assimilation, it cannot be said to imply a distinct act of memory at all. It is only when similarity is perceived amid difference, only when the accompaniments or surroundings of the object as previously seen, differencing it from the object as now seen, are brought up to the mind that we may be said distinctly to recall the past. And our state of mind in recognizing an object or person is commonly an alternation between these two acts of separating the mnemonic image from the percept and so recalling or recollecting the past, and fusing the image and the percept in what is specifically marked off as recognition.[113]

Although I have spoken of memory as a reinstatement in representative form of external experience, the term must be understood to include every revival of a past experience, whether external or internal, which is recognized as a revival. In a general way, the recallings of our internal feelings take place in close connection with the recollection of external circumstances or events, and so they may be regarded as largely conditioned by the laws of this second kind of reproduction.

The old conceptions of mind, which regarded every mental phenomenon as a manifestation of an occult spiritual substance, naturally led to the supposition that an act of recollection involves the continued, unbroken existence of the reproductive or mnemonic image in the hidden regions of the mind. To recollect is, according to this view, to draw the image out of the dark vaults of unconscious mind into the upper chamber of illumined consciousness.

Modern psychology recognizes no such pigeonhole apparatus in unconscious mind. On the purely psychical side, memory is nothing but an occasional reappearance of a past mental experience. And the sole mental conditions of this reappearance are to be found in the circumstances of the moment of the original experience and in those of the moment of the reappearance.

Among these are to be specially noted, first of all, the degree of impressiveness of the original experience, that is to say, the amount of interest it awakened and of attention it excited. The more impressive any experience, the greater the chances of its subsequent revival. Moreover, the absence of impressiveness in the original experience may be made good either by a repetition of the actual experience or, in the case of non-recurring experiences, by the fact of previous mnemonic revivals.

In the second place, the pre-existing mental states at the time of revival are essential conditions. It is now known that every recollection is determined by some link of association, that every mnemonic image presents itself in consciousness only when it has been preceded by some other mental state, presentative or representative, which is related to the image. This relation may be one of contiguity, that is to say, the original experiences may have occurred at the same time or in close succession; or one of similarity (partial and not amounting to identity), as where the sight of one place or person recalls that of another place or person. Finally, it is to be observed that recollection is often an act, in the full sense of that term, involving an effort of voluntary attention at the moment of revival.

Modern physiology has done much towards helping us to understand the nervous conditions of memory. The biologist regards memory as a special phase of a universal property of organic structure, namely, modifiability by the exercise of function, or the survival after any particular kind of activity of a disposition to act again in that particular way. The revival of a mental impression in the weaker form of an image is thus, on its physical side, due in part to this remaining functional disposition in the central nervous tracts concerned. And so, while on the psychical or subjective side we are unable to find anything permanent in memory, on the physical or objective side we do find such a permanent substratum.

With respect to the special conditions of mnemonic revival at any time, physiology is less explicit. In a general way, it informs us that such a reinstatement of the past is determined by the existence of certain connections between the nervous structures concerned in the reviving and revived mental elements. Thus, it is said that when the sound of a name calls up in the mind a visual image of a person seen some time since, it is because connections have been formed between particular regions and modes of activity of the auditory and the visual centres. And it is supposed that the existence of such connections is somehow due to the fact that the two regions acted simultaneously in the first instance, when the sight of the person was accompanied by the hearing of his name. In other words, the centres, as a whole, will tend to act at any future moment in the same complex way in which they have acted in past moments.

All this is valuable hypothesis so far as it goes, though it plainly leaves much unaccounted for. As to why this reinstatement of a