MEMORY AFFECTED BY MATERIAL INFLUENCES.

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ciple with regard to the organ or seat of the memory, is, not that it is implanted in, or dependent upon, the material frame, or any of its organs, but that it is inherent in the substratum of the very soul itself. Nevertheless, it may be contended that it is necessarily from the nature of its operations, more dependent upon the condition of the material frame than are those faculties which are exercised quite independent of any external objects, or of ideas derived from them. And that as the material senses are only the organs of the spiritual sense; so the material organs of the memory may be merely the auxiliary instruments of the spiritual memory inherent in the soul.

If indeed the memory has its seat or organ in any part of, or be in any respect dependent on, the material frame, or any of its organs; it must almost necessarily follow that in a future state we shall either be void of memory, or that the memory will be very much decreased or limited beyond what it is in our present condition. And yet during sleep, which is the period when the mind exerts itself more independent of the body than at any other time during our terrestrial career, the memory is not only most active, but seems most forcible. Nevertheless, although during sleep many of the organs of the body are torpid, they are not all so; and the soul is still united to it, and continues to influence it.

The principal reason, however, why the memory appears so vivid during sleep, is not that it is then really more powerful than when we are awake; but that, as in the case of dreaming, the mind not being excited by external impressions, its internal operations are conducted with much more force, and are not interfered with.

Possibly, the soul during its state of separation from the body, will lose all memory of terrestrial concerns, which it may regain on being reunited to the body at the resurrection.'

All the faculties of the soul, especially that of the understanding, are however more or less affected by the condition of the material frame, to which it is so closely united; and as their being affected by any changes in it is no proof of their consisting of material organs, so the fact of the memory being affected by the state of the body, affords no conclusive evidence of its being a material organ. It is also in consequence of the intellectual faculties being so influenced, that our powers of Lemory appear to vary. When the due operation of the understanding is interfered with on account of the disorder of the material organs, ideas are not received with sufficient force or clearness to impress them strongly on the memory.

"The faculty of memory is one which, with the highest probability, we may expect to be greatly extended and improved in a new and a more refined corporeal structure."-Physical Theory of Another Life, c. v.

2 Dr. Carpenter, on the other hand, tells us that "there is very strong

In many respects indeed, the memory seems to be less affected by the condition of the body as regards its vigour and activity, than are certain of the intellectual capacities. On the whole therefore it appears to be most reasonable to conclude that the retention is allied to, and mainly dependent upon, the material frame; and the recollection principally upon the soul.

Whether, in a future state of being, when the soul is in a condition of separation from the body, or when it is united to a spiritualized frame, the memory will continue to exist, might nevertheless admit of considerable discussion. It appears however most reasonable to suppose that we shall then be without retention; but that this will be, not because we shall have no occasion to call to mind the events of the past, but because we shall then have no occasion for the exercise of this endowment

to enable us to do so, inasmuch as we shall possess the power of recalling to the mind at pleasure, all the ideas which have ever passed through it, and which will be presented immediately before it, and be open to the full ken of the understanding in all their vividness, instead of being only as it were reflected there by the fading mirror of the memory..

10. Distinctive Features of the Memory in Man and Animals.

From a review of the principles advanced in the present chapter, we may draw some certain inferences as to the leading and essential points of difference which distinguish the memory in man and in animals. With the power of retention, animals in general appear to be endowed, although different animals differ greatly as regards the extent to which they possess this power, and few if any of them are gifted with it so fully as is man.' Sensations alone are what are probably

physiological reason to believe that the storing up of ideas in the memory is the psychological expression of physical changes in the cerebrum, by which ideational states are permanently registered or recorded; so that any trace' left by them, although remaining so long outside the 'sphere of consciousness,' as to have seemed non-existent, may be revived again in full vividness under certain special conditions."-Mental Physiology, book ii. chap. x. p. 436.

3 Aristotle says that those animals only which have a sense of time remember, and that animals have not reminiscence, though they have memory.-Lib. de Memor. et Rem., cap. i. 2.

The existence and extent of memory in animals is adverted to by Locke in the following passage:-" This faculty of laying up and retaining the ideas that are brought into the mind, several other animals seem to have to a great degree as well as man."-Essay on Understanding, b. ii.

c. x. s. 10.

"Brutes can have no such thing as memory, properly so called; for after

RECOLLECTION IN ANIMALS DEPENDENT ON ASSOCIATION. 395

retained in their memories; although it is possible that certain instinctive ideas of gross material objects or qualities, may be in a peculiar manner also impressed.

Animals, although endowed with souls or spiritual beings, having no active faculties or capacities annexed to them, are void of the power of recollection, but are wholly dependent on external agents for recalling sensations into their memories, which however are fully gifted with the passive power of retention. Consequently, as regards recollection, it does not seem that animals are at all endowed with it, so far as respects the active exercise of this attribute; but the sensations which are recalled to their memories, are brought back by the recurrence of objects and wants associated with them, and by other circumstances, not by any voluntary selfdirected effort of the will or instinctive being. Whatever of recollection they possess, is therefore passive and involuntary.* As regards the varieties of memory to be found among them, not only different animals of different species, but those of the same kind, differ much in this respect. No animals however appear to have any voluntary control whatever over their memories, nor are they capable of extending or improving them by education. By artificial aids, the memories of animals the impressions are made, or the ideas formed, they leave their imagination without any notice or observation to sway and direct their motives as long as they last. But their ideas decay gradually, so as never to be revived again by any proper recollection, and must be renewed by a repetition of the same, or of a like impression, from the presence of the object; which is as different from memory as natural instinct is from reason.-Browne's Procedure of the Understanding, b. ii. c. ii. p. 159.

Buffon deemed that animals have neither ingenuity, understanding, nor memory, because they are denied the power of comparing their sensations. Animals, and idiots, he concluded, possess memory only so far as it consists in the renovation of our sensations, and not that of ideas.Nat. Hist.

Le Roy on the other hand remarks that "the commonest actions of animals-their daily proceedings, suppose memory, reflection upon the past, comparison between a present object which excites their desire, and the indications of danger which repel them."-Intelligence and Perfectibility of Animals, Letter vii.

Mr. Grindon 66 that says men alone remember principles; brutes simply remember circumstances.”—Life, p. 372.

Mr. Wood, who has devoted much attention to this topic, tells me that he is decidedly of opinion that animals are endowed with memory, and instances in support of this view the capability of instruction by man which animals possess, without which, as he says very truly, no teaching would be of the slightest use.

Aristotle held that memory originated in the senses, and that it is common to many animals as well as to man. He, however, supposed that animals have not reminiscence, although they have memory, inasmuch as the exercise of reminiscence requires intellect.-Lib. de Memor. et Rem. cap. i.

Mr. Darwin says that "animals have excellent memories for persons and places.”—Descent of Man, &c., vol. i. p. 45.

are very little, if at all, assisted; although by having objects and scenes presented before them, the remembrance of the sensations of such subjects, as already stated, frequently recurs. Disease and bodily infirmity produce a corresponding effect on the memory of animals and that of man."

From the possession of memory by animals, it is obvious that this endowment, or at any rate its power of retention, is not the exclusive property of intellect; as even those animals which are of the lowest order in the creation, such as. worms and oysters, are more or less supplied with it, remember what they have experienced, and are mainly directed by memory in many of their actions. Those creatures however which are endowed with vegetation only, and have no instinctive power, such as trees and herbs, have nothing approaching to memory; but which is possessed by all intelligent, and all instinctive beings. Sensations, and instinctive ideas, if they have any, equally with intellectual ideas in man, are retained in the memories of animals.

Whether all animals whatever are gifted with memory, it might however be difficult to determine. Of the sensations and instinctive ideas which enter into their minds, or instinctive intelligent beings, and 'are transmitted to their memories, we are unable to know the exact nature and extent. They are probably, of a gross and simple nature only, sufficing merely to afford them notions of the material objects around them; and which the memory that they possess, may be serviceable upon many occasions in recalling.

5 Professor De Quatrefages has been so obliging as to favour me with the important and interesting note which follows, on the above paragraph:— "As regards the memory, and the other intellectual faculties, they are, I believe, fundamentally of the same nature in animals and in man. There is no difference except as to their extent or limitation. The rudiments of them are in tanimals, but in man they are fully developed. They may appear different in animals. But whatever you say of the one, is applicable also to the other. If you attempt to lay down a fundamental rule as to the sensation which influences animals, you do for them what certain philosophers have done for man, and you resort to crude sensational arguments. Sensation with us also recalls the remembrance of ideas through association. The notes of an air that has struck us, causes a repetition before our eyes of the hall, with its decorations, and all the succession of scenes that have interested us. Don't forget besides that the dog dreams, and that in his dreams he acts to himself a part. Nor are animals so senseless as they are generally supposed to be. The essential difference between them and man is not in this respect. It is with regard to morality and religion that we find no traces of their existence in animals, not even in the dog, which we teach what is good or bad as concerns ourselves, but which if left to itself would display no notions of this kind."

Dr. Carter Blake writes to express to me his agreement in the statements contained in the same paragraph, respecting animal memory, particularly as to their not being endowed with it "so far as respects the active voluntary exercise of this capacity."

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The experience which animals obtain, oftentimes to a very great extent, is of itself sufficient proof that they are endowed with memory. Thus, a domestic animal which has been corrected for any particular fault, will carefully avoid repeating it. Animals are also capable of being taught many acts, and birds remember tunes.

Experience is, indeed, but the retention in the memory of the sensations or ideas produced by past events. In reasonable beings, who are capable of entertaining in their minds a multiplicity of ideas, simple and compounded, of various kinds, the memory serves to treasure up these ideas; and by the action of the intellectual faculties, as also by other causes, each is recalled as occasion may require. In animals, who receive only sensations, or simple instinctive ideas of a gross and ordinary kind, the memory is less frequently called into use. It appears therefore probable that their sensations, or instinctive ideas, are recalled from their memories rather by chance,-as by the presence of objects the sensations or instinctive ideas of which are immediately associated with those in their memories, -than by the voluntary exercise of any recollective power, as in

man.

Among animals, their sensations and instinctive ideas being recalled into their memories by association only, it is probable that they are recollected in this manner much more actively and readily than they are by the same process among our own species; and thus with animals, the want of being able to recall sensations at pleasure, is but little felt. Perhaps, indeed, even with us, while ideas are recalled into the mind mainly by the action of the intellectual faculties, sensations are recalled principally by means of associations connected with them floating into the mind, and starting them from their re

cesses.

6 A remarkable instance of the power of memory in animals, especially in relation to their recollection being excited by means of sound, has been supplied to me in a note on this passage by Professor C. J. Plumptre, which is as follows:

"I remember a curious instance of an animal evidently remembering a language it could not have heard, I imagine, for a considerable time. On one occasion I was walking with my late wife in the Zoological Gardens. We came to the paddock in which the Brahmin bull is kept. He was in his house at the end of the paddock. Several people were trying to make him come out with cakes, and showing bread, and handfuls of grass, and hay; but in vain. Suddenly my wife, who had passed her earlier life in India, said to me, 'I'll see if the bull remembers still Hindostanee,' and called out Bahmah! Bahmah!' the cry with which the Hindoos call their cattle home. In a moment the Brahmin bull left his shed, and trotted swiftly up to her, and suffered himself to be patted and fondled by her, while she called to him in Hindoo terms of endearment, he apparently showing the strongest signs of pleasure at being addressed in a language once familiar to him."