The psychology of memory and recollection : read to the Psychological Society of Great Britain, June 1st, 1876 / by Mr. Serjeant Cox.

  • Edward William Cox
Date:
1876
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The psychology of memory and recollection : read to the Psychological Society of Great Britain, June 1st, 1876 / by Mr. Serjeant Cox. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    THE PSYCHOLOGY OP MEMORY as well as upon the voluntary recurrence of any one of that series of positions or actions.” This Materialistic theory of Memory would be intelli- gible and plausible if the impressions made upon the brain were few and far between. But they are infinite in number and continual of recurrence. In an average life- time many millions of different impressions are made upon the brain, probably no two of them being ever precisely identical. Marvellous indeed would it be if the conscious impressions alone were the subjects of Memory. But seeing that the most probable office of Memory is to register every impression, however slight, at any time made after the brain has become strong and active enough to receive it, whether there was or was not conciousness of the impression, it is difficult to accept the conclusion that all these multitudes of molecular positions or actions could be retained for reproduction within the structure of the brain itself. The more popular and general notion, that so many photographic pictures are printed, as it were, upon the brain in microscopic minuteness and there stored away, pile over pile, to be brought forth again when wanted, is too impossible to be seriously refuted. The Psychological theory of Memory is less fraught with difficulties and will commend itself by its simplicity. It is based upon the assumption that the phenomena of Memory go far to prove that the Conscious Self is not the molecular mechanism of the body, but that the Man is compounded of something other than the ever-changing brain, bone, and muscle—something that is conscious of that brain, bone, and muscle as being other than itself—• something that has a will, that thinks, and feels, faculties which neither experience, nor reason, nor any stretch of imagination can attach to molecular substance in any form in which it is cognizable by us. Psychology does not attempt to [134]