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Memory and the Brain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2018

W. G. Davies
W. G. Davies*
Affiliation:
Chaplain of the Joint Lunatic Asylum, Abergavenny
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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.

Type
Part I.—Original Articles
Information
Journal of Mental Science , Volume 10 , Issue 49 , April 1864 , pp. 34 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1864 

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References

∗ The various theories which have attempted to account for it by traces or impressions in the sensorium, are obviously too unphilosophical to deserve a particular refutation. ‘Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind,’ chap., vi, sect., i, Dugald Stewart.Google Scholar

∗ Our ideas being nothing but actual perceptions in the mind, which cease to be any thing when there is no perception of them, this laying up of our ideas in the repository of the memory, signifies no more but this, that the mind has a power, in many cases, to revive perceptions which it has once had, with this additional perception annexed to them, that it has had them before. And in this sense it is that our ideas are said to be in our memories, when indeed they are nowhere, but only there is an ability in the mind when it will to revive them again. Locke's ‘Essay,’ Book ii, chap, x, sect. 2.Google Scholar

∗ ‘Psychological Medicine,’ p. 351.Google Scholar

† Ibid. p. 356.Google Scholar

∗ ‘Consciousness the Standard of Truth, or Peeringe into the Logic of the Future,’ p. 27.Google Scholar

‡ ‘The Senses and the Intellect,’ p. 61,Google Scholar

∗ Bucknill, , ‘Psychhlogical Medicine,’ p. 863.Google Scholar

† Ibid., p. 354.Google Scholar

‡ Ibid., p. 354.Google Scholar

∗ ‘Psychological Journal,’ Oct., 1862.Google Scholar

∗ Spencer's, ‘Principles of Psychology,’ p. 651.Google Scholar

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