Memory and Forgetfulness.
by C. D. Olive, M.A.
Volume 11, 1900, pgs. 239-246
(Continued from pg. 159.)
Of equal importance with the face memory, and sometimes more practically useful, is the place memory, by which we find our way along roads or paths or no paths, where we have been perhaps only once before. Like the face memory, this would seem, at first, to be a question of eyes or no eyes. The man who observes narrowly all the turnings as he goes, who looks out for and notes land-marks, who takes in the contour of the ground and the peculiarities in shape of trees and bushes, will be able to find his way back or along the same road again more easily than one who walks, musing, as he goes, of other things. But it is maintained by some that this is a special faculty and not Memory at all. Popular language favours the supposition. "So and so has the bump of locality very strongly developed," is one of the old phrenological phrases that is still heard not unfrequently. And the popular view receives some confirmation from the extraordinary homing power possessed by many of the lower animals. I once heard it argued that the homing faculty possessed by many of the lower animals might be nothing more than Memory. A man, who has been cattle ranching in one of the Western States of America, related how some cattle were abandoned by their keepers in a wild mountain valley, many days' journey from any human habitation. A drought had set in; they could find no water; under stress of thirst, to save their own lives, the men climbed up a cliff inaccessible to cattle, and so, by a comparatively short cut, reached home and water, leaving the poor animals, as they supposed, to inevitable death. But three weeks afterwards the cattle all turned up quietly at home, "bringing their tails behind them," as if nothing unusual had happened. I cannot remember the exact distance they had traveled alone, but I think it was something like five hundred miles. And the man who was there and told me the story, suggested that it was possible that at each turn of the road, going anywhere, and at all times, an animal says to himself in his own silent tongue: "Home now lies yonder--in that direction," so that it keeps its bearing all through even distant wanderings.
I must confess that this explanation does not commend itself to me. Homing pigeons may perhaps fly home by sight. In the account of an extraordinary balloon ascent from the Crystal Palace one day last year, you may have read in the Westminster Gazette, how, at an altitude of something over 25,000 feet, the whole of the south coast of England the north coast of France were seen by the aeronauts spread out below them like a map. If the human eye can see so much at once, and that too under extraordinary difficulties of breathing, we do not know how far a pigeon may not be capable of seeing. Dogs, sometimes, no doubt, find their way home by smelling. But there are many instances from time to time recurring, in which no help of this kind seems to have been forthcoming. Dogs, and cats too, if newspaper stories are to be credited, have found their way home again from Dublin to London, after so many hours in the train and on board the steamer, probably with their range of vision closed all the time, or very much restricted. A young canine acquaintance of my own--a mere puppy--was taken by train from Wimbledon to London, and, after three days' wandering through miry places, where food was scarce and every boy's hand against it, found its way home to the Worple Road. Except by train and cab, it had never been that way before--it cannot have been a case of memory. And, if it be granted that some of the lower animals possess a special faculty or instinct for locality, which is not sight, nor smell, nor memory; it seems niggardly to deny the possibility of the existence of the same or a similar faculty in some, at least, of our species, even if reason does for the most part over-ride and check our older and more valuable instincts.
Of the Memory of animals much might be said. I suppose that all animals which can be tamed at all, remember to some extent, down even to the toad and the tortoise. The tortoise, who at present shares my garden with me, began last spring, for the first time, to eat its simple meal of clover quite contentedly while I sat by and watched it. I imagine that it remembered at last, after several years' experience, that, however queer-looking a creature I might be from the tortoise point of view, I did not snap or try to bite its head off when it wished to feed. The same tortoise, after unusually far wanderings during this prolonged summer, has now gone back to burrow for the winter in precisely the same corner of the garden that it chose last autumn, which looks very like an act of memory.
Whether those wonderful little creatures, that are said by some to come next in intelligence to man--I mean ants--whether they remember for more than a few minutes at a stretch, I have often wondered, but do not know.
Bees undoubtedly remember for days or weeks, possibly to the very limit of their little lives, which endure in summer time, when work is pressing, for not more than six short weeks. For, if the inhabitants of the two hives quarrel and regularly declare war on one another, there is no peace till one hive is absolutely vanquished. Night stops, but does not end the fray. The battle goes on, weather permitting, day after day till the dismal end is reached.
And, similarly, if bees are infuriated by senseless people flicking annoying pocket-handkerchiefs, or otherwise unnecessarily annoying them, they do not forget. This actually happened in my garden on one memorable occasion; and for days the bees pursued and attacked any boy found within twenty yards of their hive. I do not think that any adult was stung on that occasion or any one at all beyond the school boys. The bees appeared to pursue any one wearing the school cap. I wondered at the time if they remembered it by the colour. At all events the vindictive little creatures clung so tenaciously to the recollection of the fact that they had been wantonly flicked by foolish school boys, when all they wanted was to gather honey from the lime trees by the gate, that after five days' anxious apprehension, in a state almost of blockade, I packed up all the bees one quiet night, and took them off altogether and for ever from the school.
But, naturally, the best memories among animals are possessed by those who are most capable of being tamed and highly trained--elephants, dogs and horses--before all others. There are stories innumerable, setting for the the strong power of remembering possessed by these faithful friends of man--stories going back from today nearly three thousand years to the pathetic legend of the old hound Argus, who recognized his master Ulysses, when, after twenty years wandering, he came home disguised as a beggar--so altered that no one of his own kind knew him--no loving creature but his faithful dog, who wagged his tail, pricked up both his ears, and then and there, when he saw that he, too, was remembered by his master, died of old age and joy.
One of the best instances of memory in a modern dog, I had from an old country doctor, with whom I often used to drive out on his rounds. One road along which we often drove came at one point quite close to the river Frome. The doctor loved to tell how at this point, one autumn day, when the river was flooded and running very strong, a large dog which was following the carriage, slipped into the water. The banks were so steep and slippery that he could not get out on either side; and then, trying to swim up stream to low ground visible a little way above him, the poor beast was slowly beaten back by the current and would undoubtedly have been drowned, if his master had not, by voice and gesture, directed him for some considerable way down stream to a spot where landing was practicable. Some four years later, at the same time of year, under similar conditions of flood, the doctor was driving past that same place again with the same dog and a smaller one just emerged from puppyhood. At identically the same spot, the younger dog slipped in to the flood, whereupon, without a moment's hesitation, the old dog plunged in and quickly piloted his young companion to the same place where he had himself emerged successfully four years before.
Of elephant stories, we have not so many here in England--for obvious reasons--we have not so many elephants. But here is one. A modern story compared to that of Argus--but still more than three hundred years old. It is related by Montaigne--though it was not long ago given (without acknowledgment) in one of our evening newspapers as an event of recent date.
A man went from home on a long journey, leaving his favorite elephant in charge of--as he supposed, an honest servant. But the servant, who had long eyed grudgingly the large amount of provender provided for the elephant's daily sustenance, kept the poor creature all through his master's absence on half rations--devoting the other half to his own profit. On the master's return he noticed at once how thin the elephant had become; and when feeding time first came round he accompanied his servant to the stable to see his favorite take its food. A full ration had been of course supplied; but the elephant carefully and elaborately divided the heap at once with his trunk into two equal portions; and pushing one half towards this dishonest and now discovered servant, proceeded to consume the other. Even amidst unaccustomed plenty, he did not forget or forego the pleasure of a just revenge.
Of the memory of horses there are, no doubt, stories among the Arabs; but I do not know any. Nor have I ever heard anything distinctive about the memory of cats.
Some people suppose that the migratory instinct in birds is an act of inherited memory, though it is very difficult to find out, and I believe it is still a matter of doubt, whether the young birds in their migration are accompanied, or not, by guides and escorts of a previous generation.
The place memory, from which sprang this long, but I hope, not too wearisome digression upon animals, is invaluable in military operations. General Gordon attributed his extraordinary success in crushing the formidable Taeping rebellion in China to a large extent to his memory for places, and to the fact that, owing to this power, he had a more intimate acquaintance than most of the natives even with the intricate canals and other by-ways round Pekin, among which he had wandered for amusement, but not aimlessly; and he was thus able to concentrate his forces where they were from time to time required, with more speed and precision than the rebels who were opposed to him supposed possible.
And again, in that most interesting book that has lately been published Forty-one years in India, we learn how Lord Roberts owed much of his success at the beginning of his military career to this same place memory, which he possessed and cultivated to good purpose during the Mutiny of 1857.
Next to be considered is the remembering of facts. Facts in relation to memory are of three kinds: Those that we wish to remember; Those which we do not care about either way; and, Those which we wish to forget. Facts of the last class we naturally remember best.
Names and numbers give a good deal of trouble. Names of people whose faces we remember, whom we know that we know; and names of streets to which we are going for business or pleasure and which we have forgotten to write down. The vexing part of it is, that few of us like to have our names and individuality forgotten--to be asked to explain our own identity. I have known one man so touchy on the subject, that when an old acquaintance, whom he greeted, confessed to having forgotten who he was, he turned away affronted; and when the other man afterwards remembered his name and came up to renew old days with--"You are so-and-so, I remember now,"--naming himself right, he would not be pacified, but angrily denied himself--"No, I am not so-and-so, and I do not care to be remembered now." Since this episode, I have been very careful, and never volunteer the information that I have forgotten any one's name. It is often awkward, but a few minutes conversation carefully handled will generally bring back the missing memory.
Numbers are more easily remembered, at any rate small ones. It is a good plan to perform some small arithmetical sums with a new number that you wish to remember, when first you hear it. So, when my sister went to live at 138, Upper Street, as soon as I heard the number I said:--"2 into 138-69; 3 into 69-23; twice three times twenty-three," and I never forgot it as long as she lived there, though, why twice three times twenty-three should be easier to remember than 138 is a mystery which I cannot explain.
For larger numbers, dates especially, there are various mnemonic contrivances, which some find helpful and others valueless. Those who wish to try any such aids, cannot do better, I believe, than consult Professor Stokes' book on Memory, which, I must confess, that I have never read.
To go back for a few moments to names. A peculiar name, with an unusual collocation of syllables, is always more easily remembered, even if long, than a short and common sounding name. For example, in teaching geography, boys have rarely to be told twice the name of Bab-el-man-deb among straits, or Popocatepelt among mountains; though Mount Blanc is almost invariably forgotten, and was given back to me on occasion by an American boy, brought up in Paris, as "Blanc Mange." The long sonorous names of Jewish history are, as a rule, easily retained. The names of the Patriarch Job's three daughters, Jemima, Keziah, and Karen-happuch are often remembered with ease by young students, who are entirely ignorant of other really more interesting and far more important historical heroines. And, in the story of Sennacherib, the last resounding verse, telling of the great king's dismal end, with its five difficult proper names containing seventeen syllables between them, will stick in a memory that finds it difficult to retain an equal number of simple syllables from the Beatitudes.
In learning poetry or anything else by heart, it is a very great point to avoid all conscious mental strain. There will generally be effort of some kind; except with the very strongest and most phenomenal memories, there must be effort. But when consciousness of the effort begins to override all other feelings, it is generally the best policy to stop learning for a time--to rest. If you set yourself to learn a piece of poetry over night, you may often put it away known quite imperfectly, perhaps not half known, and find in the morning that with once reading it through, or even some time without reading it through, you know it thoroughly.
One of my friends, a lady, who has the most wonderful memory I have ever known, has put the same idea in a somewhat different and decidedly original way. She writes:--"When there is an extraordinary difficulty in learning any special subject, at the same time with anxiety to learn it, and some distress at not being able to do so, it is a good way to shelve the whole thing for a time and then go back to it by quite indirect routes--take in the remembering faculty like a shying horse." This simile of a shying horse strikes me as being very good.
Some years ago I heard a great deal of a young man--quite young, under twenty--who was studying for an interpretership under the Turkish government. Languages were his hobby. At the time that I became acquainted with other members of his family--for him I never saw--he knew seventeen different languages, and was still adding to his stock. He used to learn his languages four at a time. He had four reading desks in his room, each with a set of books on one language; and he would study at each desk fifteen minutes only, and then pass on to another, finding the change restful.
How often in the morning, after a good night's rest, we see clearly how to shape our course of action in some difficult matter that baffled us utterly over night. And, the brain baffled simply through weariness, does not always wait for the morning to resume active operations. Many instances have been known of mathematicians solving, in their sleep, difficult problems which had beaten them in over night. And, in the same way, classical scholars have been known sometimes to translate in their sleep into satisfactory Latin verses difficult pieces of English poetry, which they had been quite unable to render to their satisfaction over night.
There are one or two curious anecdotes bearing on this phenomenon in Andrew Lang's book on "Dreams and Ghosts." Here is the best of them. A man went to the post late one night with a bundle of letters. On his return home, he found that he had lost a cheque, received that evening. He went sorrowful to bed, and sleeping, dreamed that he saw the cheque curled round an area railing between his house and the post. He woke, got up, immediately dressed, went out and found the cheque exactly where and as he had seen it in his dream, curled round an area railing. Without being disbelievers in the supernatural, we may explain this naturally. The man, in all probability, dropped the cheque on his way to the post, and, returning, did actually see it with his bodily eyes curled round the railing where the wind had blown it; but his brain, through weariness and exhaustion, failed to register the impression audibly, so to speak; the tired man was unconscious of what he saw. But, as soon as body and brain were a little rested, the impression forthwith sprang into vividness and became a real mental picture.
There is, in the same collection, another quite similar story of a lady who lost a bunch of keys in a wood and dreamed that she found them under a certain tree, where, in fact, she did, next morning, find them. This admits of the same explanation.
Many of us here tonight, though we may not have had such luck with curious dreams, have, probably, more than once lost something or other that we have searched for at once and for some length in vain. Then, after going away on other business or pleasure, we have returned and found the lost treasure immediately without any hunting. Hitherto--until I read Mr. Lang's book--I had always supposed instances of this kind to be nothing but coincidences--freaks of chance. But, may it not be that when we come back to the scene of our loss, fresh and rested, we remember where we dropped or put down our lost ball, knife, thimble, or scissors, with more vivid exactness than when we discovered our loss and began the search?
(To be continued.)
Proofread by LNL, Jun. 2011