Klinische Medicin, 1893). — Cf. McKeen Cattell, Ueber dig Zeit der Erkennung von Schriftzeichen (Philos. Studien, 1885-86).
1 Ueber Aphasie and ihre Beziehungen zur W ahrnehmungen (Arch. /. Psychiatric, 1885, vol. xvi).
CHAP, ii RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS 127 that reflective perception is a circuit, in which all the elements, including the perceived object itself, hold each other in a state of mutual tension as in an electric circuit, so that no disturbance starting from the object can stop on its way and remain in the depths of the mind: it must always find its way back to the object whence it proceeds. Now, it must not be thought that this is a mere matter of words. We have here two radically different conceptions of the intellectual process. According to the first, things happen mechanic ally, and by a merely accidental series of succes sive additions. At each moment of an attentive perception, for example, new elements sent up from a deeper stratum of the mind might join the earlier elements, without creating thereby a general disturbance and without bringing about a transformation of the whole system. In the second, on the contrary, an act of attention implies such a solidarity between the mind and its object, it is a circuit so well closed, that we cannot pass to states of higher concentration without creating, whole and entire, so many new circuits which envelop the first and have nothing in common between them but the perceived object. Of these different circles of memory, which later we shall study in detail, the smallest, A, is the nearest to immediate perception. It contains only the object O, with the after-image which comes back and overlies it. Behind it, the larger and larger circles B, C, D correspond to growing CHAP. II efforts at intellectual expansion. It is the whole of memory, as we shall see, that passes over into each of these circuits, since memory is always present; but that memory, capable, by reason of its elasticity, of expanding more and more, i reflects upon the object a growing number of sug gested images, — sometimes the details of the object itself, sometimes concomi tant details which may throw light upon it. Thus, after having rebuilt the object perceived, as an independent whole, we re assemble, together with it, the more and more distant conditions with which it forms one system. If we call B', C', D', these causes of growing depth, situated behind the object, and virtually given with the object itself, it will be seen that the progress of attention results in creating anew not only the object perceived, but also the ever widening systems with which it may be bound up; so that in the measure in which the circles B, C, D represent a higher expansion of memory, their reflexion attains in B', Of, D' deeper strata of reality.
The same psychical life, therefore, must be no. L CHAP, ii RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS I2Q supposed to be repeated an endless number of times on the different storeys of memory, and the same act of the mind may be performed at varying heights. In the effort of attention, the mind is always concerned in its entirety, but it simplifies or complicates itself according to the level on which it chooses to go to work. Usually it is the present perception which determines the direction of our mind; but, according to the degree of tension which our mind adopts and the height at which it takes its stand, the perception develops a greater or smaller number of images. In other words, personal recollections, exactly localized, the series of which represents the course so there ate °f our Past existence, make up, all topi£esenoi gether, the last and largest enclosure themSeat °f our memory. Essentially fugitive, SS,811 they become materialized only by chance, plane8 of* either when an accidentally precise dedream, termination of our bodily attitude attracts them, or when the very indetermination of that attitude leaves a clear field to the caprices of their manifestation. But this outer most envelope contracts and repeats itself in inner and concentric circles, which in the:r narrower range enclose the same recollections grown smaller, more and more removed from their personal and original form, and more and more capable, from their lack of distinguishing features, of being applied to the present percep tion and of determining it after the manner of a I3O MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP. 11 species which defines and absorbs the individual. There comes a moment when the recollection thus brought down is capable of blending so well with the present perception that we cannot say where perception ends or where memory begins. At that precise moment, memory, instead of capri ciously sending in and calling back its images, follows regularly, in all their details, the move ments of the body.
But, in the degree that these recollections draw nearer to movements, and so to external perwwie, on ception, the work of memory acquires action"16 °f a mgner practical importance. Past images, reproduced exactly as they were, bec^Le°one w^n a^ their details and even with their with action, affective colouring, are the images of idle fancy or of dream: to act is just to induce this memory to shrink, or rather to become thinned and sharpened, so that it presents nothing thicker than the edge of a blade to actual exper ience, into which it will thus be able to penetrate. In truth, it is because psychology has failed to separate out the motor element in memory, that we have sometimes overlooked and sometimes exaggerated what is automatic in the evocation of remembrances. According to our view, an appeal is made to activity at the precise moment when perception gives rise to imitative move ments which scan it, as it were, automatically. A sketch is thereby furnished to us, into which we put the right details and the right colouring by CHAP, ii RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS 131 projecting into it memories more or less remote. But such is not the usual way of describing the process. Sometimes the mind is supposed to be absolutely independent of circumstances, to work exactly as it likes on present or absent objects; — and then we can no longer understand how it is that the normal process of attention may be seriously impaired by even a slight disturbance of the sensori-motor equilibrium. Sometimes, on the contrary, the „ evocation of images is sup posed to be a mere mechanical effect of present perception; it is assumed that, by a necessary concatenation of processes supposed to be all alike, the object calls forth sensations and the sensations ideas which cling to them; — but then, since there is no reason why the operation, which is mechanical to begin with, should change its character as it goes on, we are led to the hypo thesis of a brain wherein mental states may dwell to slumber and to awaken. In both cases the true function of the body is misunderstood, and as neither theory teaches how and why the inter vention of a mechanism is necessary, neither of them is able to show where such intervention should stop if it is once brought in.
But it is time to leave these general considera tions. We must ascertain whether our hypothesis is confirmed or contradicted by the facts of cerebral localization known at the present day. The disorders of imaginative memory, which correspond to local lesions of the cortex, are always diseases of the faculty of recognition; either of visual or auditory recognition in general (psychic blindness and deafness), or of the recog nition of words (word blindness, word deafness, etc.). These disorders we have now to exam ine.
If our hypothesis is well founded, these failures of recognition are in no sense due to the fact that the recollections occupied the in- Hence we may __ r infer that jured region of the brain. They must lesions oi the J * brain affect be due to one of two causes: somethe automatic movements of times our body is no longer able inattentive J ° recognition, automatically to adopt, under the influor the volun- rt tary move- ence of the external stimulus, the precise ments of attentive attitude by means of which a choice recognition, but nothing could be automatically made among our memories; sometimes the mem ories are no longer able to find a fulcrum in the body, a means of prolonging themselves in action. In the first case, the lesion affects the mechanisms which continue, in an automati cally executed movement, the stimulation re ceived: attention can no longer be fixed by the object. In the second case, the lesion involves those particular cortical centres which prepare voluntary movements by lending them the re quired sensory antecedent, centres which, rightly or wrongly, are termed image-centres: attention can no longer be fixed by the subject. But, in either case, it is actual movements which are hindered or future movements which are no longer prepared: there has been no destruction of memories.
Now pathology confirms this forecast. It rereveals to us two absolutely distinct kinds of psychic blindness and deafness, and of word blindness and deafness. In the first kind, visual and auditory memories are still evoked, but they cannot apply themselves to the corresponding perceptions. In the second, evocation of the memories themselves is hindered. Is it true that the lesion involves, as we said, the sensori-motor mechanisms of auto matic attention in the first case, and the imagina tive mechanisms of voluntary attention in the second? In order to verify our hypothesis, we must limit demonstration to a definite example. No doubt we could show that visual recognition of things in general, and of words in particular, implies a semi-automatic motor process to begin with, and then an active projection of memories which engraft themselves on the corresponding atti tudes. But we prefer to confine ourselves to impres sions of hearing, and more particularly to the hear ing of articulate language, because this example is the most comprehensive. To hear speech is, in fact, first of all to recognize a sound, then to discover its sense, and finally to interpret it more or less thoroughly: in short, it is to pass through all the stages of attention and to exercise several higher or lower powers of memory. More over, no disorders are more common or better studied than those of the auditive memory of words. And, lastly, acoustic verbal images are not destroyed without a serious lesion of certain determined convolutions of the cortex: so that we are here provided with an undisputed example of localization, in regard to which we can enquire whether the brain is really capable of storing up memories. We have, then, to show in the audi tory recognition of words: first, an automatic sensori-motor process; secondly, an active and, so to speak, excentric projection of memoryimages.
i. I listen to two people speaking in a language which is unknown to me. Do I therefore hear Evidence from them talk? The vibrations which whaytdwe We' reacn my ears are the same as those String and which strike theirs. Yet I perceive ^mSor' The only a confused noise, in which all diagram.' sounds are alike. I distinguish no thing, and could not repeat anything. In this same sonorous mass, however, the two interlo cutors distinguish consonants, vowels and sylla bles which are not at all alike, in short, separate words. Between them and me where is the difference?
The question is, how can the knowledge of a language, which is only memory, modify the material content of a present perception, and cause some listeners actually to hear what others, in the same physical conditions, do not hear. It is alleged, indeed, that the auditory recollections of words, accumulated in memory, are called up by the sound-impression and come to strengthen its effect. But if the conversa tion to which I listen is, for me, only a noise, we may suppose the sound increased as much as we like: the noise will be none the more intelligible for being louder. I grant that the memory of a word will be called up by the sound of that word: yet it is necessary, for this, that the sound of the word should have been heard by the ear. How can the sounds perceived speak to memory, how can they choose, in the store house of auditory images, those which should come to rejoin them, unless they have been al ready separated, distinguished, — in short, per ceived, — as syllables and as words?
This difficulty does not appear to have been sufficiently noticed by the theorists of sensory aphasia. For in word deafness the patient finds himself, in regard to his own language, in the same position as we all are when we hear an unknown tongue. He has generally preserved intact his sense of hearing, but he has no under standing of the words spoken to him, and is fre quently even unable to distinguish them. The explanation generally given of the disease is that the auditory recollection of words has been destroyed in the cortex, or that a lesion, sometimes transcortical, sometimes sub-cortical, hinders the auditive memory from evoking the idea, or the perception from uniting with the memory. But in the latter case, at least, the psychological question has still to be answered: what is the conscious process which the lesion has abolished, and what is the intermediary pro cess that we go through in our normal condition in order to discern words and syllables which are, at first, given to the ear as a continuity of sound?
The difficulty would be insuperable if we really had only auditory impressions on the one hand, and auditory memories on the other. Not so however, if auditory impressions organize nascent movements, capable of scanning the phrase which is heard and of emphasizing its main articulations. These automatic movements of internal accom paniment, at first undecided or uncoordinated, might become more precise by repetition; they would end by sketching a simplified figure in which the listener would find, in their main lines and principal directions, the very movements of the speaker. Thus would unfold itself in con sciousness, under the form of nascent muscular sensations, the motor diagram, as it were, of the speech we hear. To adapt our hearing to a new language would then consist, at the outset, neither in modifying the crude sound nor in sup plementing the sounds with memories; it would be to coordinate the motor tendencies of the mus cular apparatus of the voice to the impressions of the ear; it would be to perfect the motor accom paniment.
In learning a physical exercise, we begin by CHAP. H RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS 137 imitating the movement as a whole, as our eyes see it from without, as we think we have seen it done. Our perception of it is confused; confused therefore will be the movement whereby we try to repeat it. But whereas our visual perception was of a continuous whole, the movement by which we endeavour to reconstruct the image is compound and made up of a multitude of muscular contrac tions and tensions; and our consciousness of these itself includes a number of sensations resulting from the varied play of the articulations. The confused movement which copies the image is, then, already its virtual decomposition; it bears within itself, so to speak, its own analysis. The progress which is brought about by repetition and practice consists merely in unfolding what was previously wrapped up, in bestowing on each of the elementary movements that autonomy which ensures precision, without, however, breaking up that solidarity with the others without which it would become useless. We are right when we say that habit is formed by the repetition of an effort; but what would be the use of repeating it, if the result were always to reproduce the same thing? The true effect of repetition is to decom pose, and then to recompose, and thus appeal to the intelligence of the body. At each new attempt it separates movements which were interpenetrat ing; each time it calls the attention of the body to a new detail which had passed unperceived; it bids the body discriminate and classify; it teaches what is the essential; it points out, one after another, within the total movement, the lines that mark off its internal structure. In this sense, a movement is learnt when the body has been made to understand it.
So a motor accompaniment of speech may well break the continuity of the mass of sound. But we But this have now to point out in what this Smpanfment accompaniment consists. Is it speech °peechr!Ldi- itself, repeated internally? If this were Sts'slS so» *ne child would be able to repeat all outlines. the words that its ear can distinguish; and we ourselves should only need to understand a foreign language to be able to pronounce it with a correct accent. The matter is far from being so simple. I may be able to catch a tune, to follow its phrasing, even to fix it in memory, without being able to sing it. I can easily dis tinguish the peculiarities of inflexion and tone in an Englishman speaking German — I correct him therefore, mentally; — but it by no means follows that I could give the right inflexion and tone to the German phrase, if I were to utter it. Here, moreover, the observation of every-day life is confirmed by clinical facts. It is still possible to follow and understand speech when one has be come incapable of speaking. Motor aphasia does not involve word deafness.
This is because the diagram, by means of which we divide up the speech we hear, indicates only its salient outlines. It is to speech itself what CHA*. 11 RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS 139 the rough sketch is to the finished picture. For it is one thing to understand a difficult movement, another to be able to carry it out. To under stand it, we need only to realize in it what is essential, just enough to distinguish it from all other possible movements. But to be able to carry it out, we must besides have brought our body to understand it. Now, the logic of the body admits of no tacit implications. It demands that all the constituent parts of the required movement shall be set forth one by one, and then put together again. Here a complete analysis is necessary, in which no detail is neglected, and an actual synthesis, in which nothing is curtailed. The imagined diagram, composed of a few nascent muscular sensations, is but a sketch. The muscular sensations, really and completely experienced, give it colour and life.
It remains to be considered how an accom paniment of this kind can be produced, and Evidence whether it really is always produced. Ss'o?^ We know that in order effectively to aphasia, in pronounce a word the tongue and lips must articulate, the larynx must be brought into play for phonation, and affected. fae muscles of the chest must produce an expiratory movement of air. Thus, to every syllable uttered there corresponds the play of a number of mechanisms already prepared in the cerebral and bulbar centres. These mechanisms are joined to the higher centres of the cortex by the axis-cylinder processes of the pyramidal cells in the psycho-motor zone. Along this path the impulse of the will travels. So, when we desire to articulate this or that sound, we transmit the order to act to this or that group of motor me chanisms selected from among them all. But, while the ready-made mechanisms which corres pond to the various possible movements of articu lation and phonation are connected with the causes (whatever these may be) which set them to work in voluntary speech, there are facts which put beyond all doubt the linkage of these same mechan isms with the auditory perception of words. First of all, among the numerous varieties of aphasia de scribed in clinical reports, we know of two (Lichtheim's 4th and 6th forms) which appear to imply a relation of this kind. Thus, in a case observed by Lichtheim himself, the subject had lost, as the result of a fall, the memory of the articulation of words, and consequently the faculty of spon taneous speech; yet he repeated quite correctly what was said to him.1 On the other hand, in cases where spontaneous speech is unaffected, but where word deafness is absolute and the patient no longer understands what is said to him, the faculty of repeating another person's words may still be completely retained.8 It may be said, with Bastian, that these phenomena merely point to a fatigue of the articulatory or auditive 1 Lichtheim, On Aphasia (Brain, Jan. 1885, p. 447).
2 Ibid., p. 454.
CHAP, n RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS 14!
memory of words, the acoustic impressions only serving to awaken that memory from its torpor.1 We may have to allow for this hypothesis, but it does not appear to us to account for the curious phenomena of echolalia, long since pointed out by Romberg,2 Voisin8 and Forbes Winslow,4 which are termed by Kussmaul5 (probably with some exaggeration) acoustic reflexes. Here the subject repeats mechanically, and perhaps uncon sciously, the words he hears, as though the auditory sensations converted themselves automatically into movements of articulation. From these facts some have inferred that there is a special mechanism which unites a so-called acoustic cen tre of words with an articulatory centre of speech.6 The truth appears to lie between these two hypo theses. There is more in these various phenomena than absolutely mechanical actions, but less than an appeal to voluntary memory. They testify to a tendency of verbal auditory impressions to 1 Bastian, On Different Kinds of Aphasia (British Medical Journal, Oct. and Nov. 1887, p. 935).
a Romberg, Lehrbuch der Nervenkrankheiten, 1853, vol. ii.
8 Quoted by Bateman, On Aphasia. London, 1890, p. 79. — Cf. Marce", Memoire sur quelques observations de physiologic pathologique (Mem. de la Soc. de Biologie, 2nd series, vol. ii, p. 102).
4 Forbes Winslow, On Obscure Diseases of the Brain. London, 1861, p. 505.
6 Kussmaul, Die Storungen der Sprache, Leipzig. 1877, PP-55 et seq.
' Arnaud, Contribution a V etude clinique de la surdite verbale (Arch, de neurologie, 1886, p. 192). — Spamer, Ueber Asymbolie (Arch. /. Psychiatrie, vol. vi, pp. 507 and 524).
prolong themselves in movements of articulation; a tendency which assuredly does not escape, as a rule, the control of the will, perhaps even im plies a rudimentary discrimination, and expresses itself, in the normal state, by an internal repe tition of the striking features of the words that are heard. Now our motor diagram is nothing else.
Considering this hypothesis more closely, we shall perhaps find in it the psychological explana tion, which we were just now seeking, of certain forms of word deafness. A few cases of word deafness are known where there was a com plete survival of acoustic memory. The patient had retained, unimpaired, both the auditive memory of words and the sense of hearing; yet he recognized no word that was said to him.1 A subcortical lesion is here supposed, which prevents the acoustic impressions from going to join the verbal auditory images in the cortical centres where they are supposed to be deposited. But, in the first place, the question is whether the brain can store up images. And, secondly, even if it were proved that there is some lesion in the paths that the acoustic impres sions have to follow, we should still be compelled to seek a psychological interpretation of the final 1 See, in particular: P. Serieux, Sur un cos de surdite verbale pure (Revue de Medecine, 1893, p. 733 et seq.); Lichtheim, loc. cit., p. 461; and Arnaud, Contrib. d I' etude de la surdite vcrbtde (2° article), Arch, de Neurologic, 1886, p. 366.
CHAP, ii RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS 143 result. For, by hypothesis, the auditory memories can still be recalled to consciousness; by hypo thesis also, the auditory impressions still reach consciousness; there must therefore be in con sciousness itself a gap, a solution of continuity, something, whatever it is, which hinders the perception from joining the memories. Now, we may throw some light on the case if we remember that crude auditory perception is really that of a continuity of sound, and that the sensori-motor connexions established by habit must have as their office, in the normal state, to decompose this continuity. A lesion of these conscious mechan isms, by hindering the decomposition, might completely check the up-rush of memories which tend to alight upon the corresponding perceptions. Therefore the ' motor diagram ' might be what is injured by the lesion. If we pass in review the cases (which are, indeed, not very numerous) of word deafness where acoustic memories were retained, we notice certain details that are inter esting in this respect. Adler notes, as a remark able fact in word deafness, that the patients no longer react even to the loudest sounds, though their hearing has preserved all its acuteness.1 In other words, sound no longer finds in them its motor echo A patient of Charcot's, attacked by a passing word deafness, relates that he heard his clock strike, but that he could not count the 1 Adler, Beitrag zur Kenntniss der seltneren Formen von nensorischtr Aphasie (Neurol. Centralblatt, 1891, p. 296 et »eq.).
strokes.1 Probably he was unable to separate and distinguish them. Another patient declares that he perceives the words of a conversation, but as a confused noise.2 Lastly, the patient who has lost the understanding of the spoken word recovers it if the word is repeated to him several times, and especially if it is pronounced with marked divisions, syllable by syllable.3 This last fact, observed in several cases of word deafness where acoustic memories were unim paired, is particularly significant.
Strieker's4 mistake was to believe in a complete internal repetition of the words that are heard. His assertion is already contradicted by the simple fact that we do not know of a single case of motor aphasia which brought out word deafness. But all the facts combine to prove the existence of a motor tendency to separate the sounds and to establish their diagram. This automatic tendency is not without (as we said above) a certain elementary mental effort: how otherwise could we identify with each other, and consequently follow with the same diagram, 1 Ballet, Le langage interieur. Paris, 1888, p. 85.
8 See the three cases cited by Arnaud in the Archives de neurologic, 1886, p. 366 et seq. (Contrib. clinique a I 'elude de la surdite verbale, 2? article). — Cf. Schmidt's case, Gehors- und Sprachstdrung in Folgc von Apoplexic (Allg. Zeitschriften /. Psychiatric, 1871, vol. xxvii, p. 304).
4 Strieker, Studien iiber die Sprachvorstellung. Vienna, 1880.
CHAP, it REALIZATION OF MEMORIES 145 similar words pronounced on different notes and by different qualities of voice? These inner movements of repeating and recognizing are like a prelude to voluntary attention. They mark the limit between the voluntary and the automatic. By them, as we hinted before, the characteristic phenomena of intellectual recogni tion are first prepared and then determined. But what is this complete and fully conscious recognition?
2. We come to the second part of our subject: from movements we pass to memories. We have Transition to sa^ that attentive recognition ie a kind ?*™ of °^ circuit, in which the external object to us deeper and deeper parts itself, as our memory adopts a n?- correspondingly higher degree of tension cai process. jn or(jer to project recollections towards it. In the particular case we are now considering, the object is an interlocutor whose ideas develop within his consciousness into auditory representa tions which are then materialized into uttered words. So, if we are right, the hearer places him self at once in the midst of the corresponding ideas, and then develops them into acoustic memories which go out to overlie the crude sounds perceived, while fitting themselves into the motor diagram. To follow an arithmetical addition is to do it over again for ourselves. To understand another's words is, in like manner, to reconstruct intelli- L gently, starting from the ideas, the continuity of sound which the ear perceives. And, more gener ally, to attend, to recognize intellectually, to interpret, may be summed up in a single opera tion whereby the mind, having chosen its level, having selected within itself, with reference to the crude perceptions, the point that is exactly symmetrical with their more or less immediate cause, allows to flow towards them the memories that will go out to overlie them.
Such, however, is certainly not the usual way of looking at the matter. The associationist habit is there; and, in accordance with it, we find men maintaining that, by the mere effect of contiguity, the perception of a sound brings back the memory of the sound and memories bring back the cor responding ideas. And then, we have the cerebral lesions which seem to bring about a destruction of memories; more particularly, in the case we are studying, there are the lesions of the brain found in word deafness. Thus psychological observa tions and clinical facts seem to conspire. To gether they seem to point to the existence, within the cortex, of auditory memories slumbering, whether as a physico-chemical modification of cer tain cells or under some other form. A sensory stimulation is then supposed to awaken them; and, finally, by an intra-cerebral process, perhaps by trans-cortical movements that go to find the complementary representations, they are supposed to evoke ideas.
CHAT, ii REALIZATION OF MEMORIES 147 Now consider lor a moment the amazing con sequences of an hypothesis of this kind. The auditory image of a word is not an object with well-defined outlines; for tne same word pronounced by different theS8woSd' voices, or by the same voice on different dbwte notes> gives a different sound. So, if You adopt the hypothesis of which we have been speaking, you must assume that there are as many auditory images of the same word as there are pitches of sound and qualities of voice. Do you mean that all these images are treasured up in the brain? Or is it that the brain chooses? If the brain chooses one of them, whence comes its pre ference? Suppose, even, that you can explain why the brain chooses one or the other; how is it that this same word, uttered by a new person, gives a sound which, although different, is still able to rejoin the same memory? For you must bear in mind that this memory is supposed to be an inert and passive thing and consequently incapable of discovering, beneath external differences, an internal similitude. You speak of the auditory image of a word as if it were an entity or a genus: such a genus can, indeed, be constructed by an active memory which extracts the resemblance of several com plex sounds and only retains, as it were, their common diagram. But, for a brain that is sup posed — nay, is bound — to record only the materiality of the sounds perceived, there must be, of one and the same word, thousands of distinct images. Uttered by a new voice, it will constitute a new image, which will simply be added to the others. But there is something still more perplexing. A word has an individuality for us only from the moment that we have been taught to abstract it. What we first hear are short phrases, not words. A word is always continuous with the other words which accompany it, and takes different aspects according to the cadence and movement of the sentence in which it is set: just as each note of a melody vaguely reflects the whole musi cal phrase. Suppose, then, that there are indeed model auditory memories, consisting in certain intra-cerebral arrangements, and lying in wait for analogous impressions of sound: these impressions may come, but they will pass unrecognized. How could there be a common measure, how could there be a point of contact, between the dry, inert, isolated image and the living reality of the word organized with the rest of the phrase?
I understand clearly enough that beginning of auto matic recognition which would consist, as I have said above, in emphasizing inwardly the principal divisions of the sentence that is heard, and so in adopting its movement. But, unless we are to suppose in all men identical voices pronouncing in the same tone the same stereotyped phrases, I fail to see how the words we hear are able to rejoin their images in the brain.
CHAP. n. REALIZATION OF MEMORIES 149 Now, if memories are really deposited in the cortical cells, we should find in sensory aphasia, The pheno- for instance, the irreparable loss of sory aphasia do certain determined words, the integral not point to the.., _^ existence of Conservation OI Others. But, as a matbut suggest a ter of fact, things happen quite differvery different, 0...,..
hypothesis. entry, bometimes it is the whole set of memories that disappears, the faculty of mental hearing being purely and simply abol ished; sometimes there is a general weakening of the function; but it is usually the function which is diminished and not the number of recollections. It seems as if the patient had no longer strength to grasp his acoustic memories, as if he turned round about the verbal image without being able to hit upon it. To enable him to recover a word it is often enough to put him on the track of it, by giving him its first syllable,1 or even by merely encouraging him.2 An emotion may produce the same effect.8 There are, however, cases in which it does indeed seem that definite groups of representations have disappeared from memory. I have passed in review a large number of these facts, and it has seemed that they could be referred 1 Bernard, op. tit., pp. 172 and 179. Cf. Babilde, Les troubles de la memoire dans I'alcoolisme. Paris, 1886 (medical thesis), P- 44-