Memory and Forgetfulness.
by C. D. Olive, M.A.
Volume 11, 1900, pgs. 301-309
"Lord Macaulay is said to have had the most wonderful memory of his time; a memory so good, that he never forgot anything once heard or read. A memory so good as this is not altogether a subject for congratulation. It makes it so difficult to be original!"
(Continued from pg. 246.)
I heard, not long ago, an amusing and quite authentic memory anecdote of a slightly different complexion, but bearing on the same point--brain weariness and after-recollection. A man, known to himself and his friends to be what is called "absent-minded," was returning home one night from one of our large city banks in which he was employed, with a part of his salary, drawn that day, in his pocket, in the shape of a £100 note. When he reached home and began to change his clothes, the note was gone! All his pockets were searched thoroughly in vain. Suddenly he remembered how, as he stood chatting in Chancery Lane with a friend, met accidentally, in his own old absent-minded fashion, he had rolled and re-rolled into a ball a bit of old paper drawn from his pocket, or somewhere else. And then quickly the further impression came back that, still talking and thinking consciously of nothing but the matter under discussion, he finished his paper pellet to his own half-conscious satisfaction and took aim and threw it, and was glad with half-conscious gladness when it passed through the hole in the scraper at which he had aimed. £100 was too much even for a banker to lose; he went back at once to Chancery Lane, stood in the very same spot where he had stopped to chat, identified the scraper, and behind it found his paper pellet. It was his £100 note!
In this same book of Mr. Lang's, on "Dreams and Ghosts," there was an explanation quite new to me of a strange phenomenon that has, no doubt, puzzled most of us, that strangest of all strange sensations--that we have surely been through this before. Somewhere and somewhen we have heard before all that you are saying now, we know exactly what you are going to say next; it is on the tip of our tongue to tell you, but we can't tell you, till you have said it; and then we see that we were right. Is it really a recollection of past days? An indication, if not a proof, of a previous existence? Mr. Lang philosophically suggest that it may be merely the two halves of the brain not working simultaneously--one side is just a trifle a front of the other. Whether this is so or not is not for an unscientific schoolmaster to determine. Certainly, Wordsworth's explanation appeals more strongly to me:--
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us--our life's star--
Has had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of Glory do we come
From God who is our home."
It has often struck me that the sin of plagiarism is probably due more often to the unconscious exercise of memory than to downright literary dishonesty.
The inference which have just drawn that seemingly prophetic dreams are not necessarily supernatural, suggests another tradition with respect to memory, which I have never been able to verify. It is said that drowning men recall without conscious effort in one vivid flash of memory all the events of their past life. I dislike upsetting traditions, but the only man I have ever known to have been nearly drowned did not have this experience. Buffeted by breakers off the shore while bathing, he had lost all power of speech, all power of moving any limb, all hope of life. But I have heard him say there was no recollection of the past, no fear for the future; only a grim sense of irritation at the irony of the present: to be drowned like this in sight of the shore, within hail of hundreds, if he could only raise his voice and cry--with his feet actually dragging on the sand!
So again of other forms of what threatens to be the death agony. I met an old friend once after many years of separation, and we talked of school days and, of course, of cricket. "No," he said, "I can't play cricket now, because of my stiff shoulder." Then I remembered, what I ought not to have forgotten, how, in India, he had been partly eaten by a tiger. And thirsting for information, I at once rushed in with eager questions: "Did you feel any pain? Were you frightened or did the creature mesmerize you? And did you, before losing consciousness, remember in one flash all your past life?" "No," he answered, "there was no pain (till afterwards) and no recollection of the past, nor fears--only a dreamy sensation of wonderment at the funny noise it makes to hear your own bones being scrunched."
A paper on memory would hardly be complete, without some allusion to famous historical memories. Lord Macaulay is said to have had the most wonderful memory of his time; a memory so good, that he never forgot anything once heard or read. A memory so good as this is not altogether a subject for congratulation. It makes it so difficult to be original! When a man remembers always word for word what other people have thought and said on any particular subject, it must often be hard not to reproduce their works verbatim, instead of reclothing the same ideas in a new dress, as a man, with a less perfect memory, perforce must do.
Montaigne, to instance a writer who was, or claimed to be, at the opposite pole, from whose reflections we, with bad memories, may draw some consolation--Montaigne, in his amusing Essay on "Lyars," begins by ascribing to himself the very worst memory and the most treacherous that ever was. But he goes on to mention incidentally that memory and understanding are not the same thing. For "a strong memory," he alleges, "is commonly coupled with infirm judgment." And notwithstanding the misery and inconvenience of it, he says; "I derive these comforts from my infirmity: first, that it is an evil from which principally I have found reason to correct a worse, namely ambition; this defect being intolerable in those who take upon them the negotiations of the world, an employment of the greatest honour and trust, among men. Secondly, that she has fortified me in my other faculties proportionally as she has furnished me in this; I should otherwise have been apt implicitly to have reposed my wit and judgment upon the bare report of other men, without ever setting them to work upon any inquisition whatever, had the strange inventions and opinions of the authors I have read been ever present with me by the benefit of memory. Thirdly: that by this means I am not so talkative; for the magazine of the memory is ever better furnished with matter than that of the invention; and had mine been faithful to be, I had, ere this, deafened all my friends with my eternal babble, the subjects themselves rousing and stirring up the little faculty I have of handling and applying them, heating and extending my discourse. 'Tis a great imperfection, and what I have observed in several of my intimate friends who, as their memories supply them with a present and entire review of things, derive their narratives from so remote a fountain, and crowd them with so many impertinent circumstances, that, though the story be good in itself, they make a shift to spoil it; and if otherwise, you are either to curse the strength of their memory or the weakness of their judgment."--Collin's Translation, 3rd edition, 1700.
Planche, the burlesque writer, antiquary and dramatist, whose memoirs appeared some twenty-five years ago, used to affirm, it is said, with truthfulness, that he could hear a play read once and reproduce it from beginning to end correctly. I am not sure if it was Planche or another who, after hearing a young author read aloud a fairly long play, said by way of having a joke: "Come, come, you are not going to pretend that you wrote that yourself? Why, I have known it by heart for years! I can say it all through," and he began to do so. The poor young author, in desperation at the though that he must have gone mad and copied unwittingly, tore his precious MS. into fragments; whereupon Planche, if it was he, good-naturedly confessed his trick, and his abnormal memory; and at once proceeded to dictate the play, which in due time was written down again in its entirety.
One of the most extraordinary memories that have ever been known was possessed by the great classical scholar of Cambridge at the end of last century--Richard Porson. His father, deliberately and of set purpose, trained his memory from a child by making him perform all the ordinary processes of arithmetic entirely in his head. So that, by the time he was nine years old, Porson could extract cube roots entirely in his head.
When he went to Eton at the age of 15, he knew by heart most of the classical books that were then read in that school: i.e., almost all Horace, Virgil, the Iliad, with parts of Cicero, Livy and the Odyssey. A story is told of him that, as he was going into school one day, a mischievous companion substituted another book for his Horace--the subject of the lesson. Young Porson was not in the least disconcerted, but when his turn came to construe, held up the other book, repeated the Latin of the lesson and translated it, so that his schoolfellow's trick passed undiscovered by the master. It is somewhat sad, and yet in a way consoling for the rest of us, who forget better that we remember, that Porson, in spite of his prodigious memory--which was coupled with prodigious ability of other kinds--did practically nothing, but criticize and correct or restore the old classical authors. It was said that the restoration and translation of the Rosetta stone, on which he spent some time and trouble, was not so good and valuable as that done by a less learned man (Heyne); and, except to a very small circle of intimate friends, he was neither a good conversationalist nor an agreeable companion.
I should like to give you an instance of the singularly accurate and retentive memory of the lady from whom I quoted a while ago. Talking (in 1896 I think) of the Rontgen Rays and an article that had appeared in one of the newspapers a propos of Odic Light, she observed: "But this is nothing new. A German, named Reichenbach, discovered it forty years ago. There was an article about it when I was a girl in the old Household Worlds." Then in a musing tone to herself: "Yes, it must have been in March, fifty-seven." And going to the shelf, she took down the bundle of the numbers of Household Words for 1857, and turned at once to the article in question. There were also articles on the same subject in the same Magazine for 1852 and 1853, which she then mentioned and found immediately. To the best of her recollection she had not re-read or thought of the articles since they appeared.
The instinct of a schoolmaster--or if you will, the perversity of a pedagogue--brings me back to my boys. The best memory that I ever encountered among boys was in the first pupil that I ever had at Wimbledon. He now holds some official position in Singapore. The first morning that he came to school, he told me that his mother had taught him the Latin Grammar to the end of amo. I spent the first quarter of an hour in closely questioning him on what he had learnt, and I did not receive a single incorrect answer. The second quarter of an hour I spent in pointing out the similarities and differences of the other three conjugations of verbs with and from the first. After this, he knew his regular verbs and could use them. We never had occasion to go back to that part of the grammar again. No one who has never taught Latin to boys can realize the singular pleasure that thus was mine, thanks to this boy's good memory--and his mother.
Another boy, who also stands out as one of the five best pupils of my twenty-two years in Wimbledon--now an artillery officer--once surprised me very much by an unexpected display of his invariably good memory.
One Ash Wednesday morning, I remembered with some annoyance that I had forgotten again, as I had done for several years in succession, to remind my day pupils on the Tuesday that the following day being Ash Wednesday, they were to bring their prayer books to school, as we should all go to church. Creswell was sitting next to me, and I said in my despair at my own forgetfulness, more than half jestingly: "Oh! Creswell, do remind me next Shrove Tuesday to tell all the boys to bring their prayer books on Ash Wednesday morning." Next Shrove Tuesday, at breakfast time I had forgotten again as usual; but not so Creswell. With the most polite of smiles he began: "Will you remind the boys this morning, Sir, to bring their prayer books to-morrow, as we shall go to church."
I had intended to say something more about the strange capriciousness of memory; but this paper threatens to be too long already. Yet, I cannot refrain from quoting the well-known story from Sir Walter Scott, of the old Scotchman, whose minister was complimenting him on his excellent memory. "Na, Na, your Reverence," said the old man, "my memory is a very wilful thing; it only remembers just what it likes. Now, if your Reverence preached to me an hour, I don't suppose I should remember a word!"
The Correlative of Memory is Forgetfulness. To treat of Forgetfulness, if I may do so for a few minutes, is not to treat a new subject--hardly a new side of the original theme of Memory. But the very word "Forget" seems to suggest some other points of view. And first, if, as before, I may say a few brief words about your children. Possibly you are tired of children? I myself am sometimes tired of them. But to save my own soul, so to speak, as a teacher I must say it. Do not, I implore you, accept that easy and fatal phrase, "I quite forgot!" as a valid and sufficient reason for the non-performance of any duty, however trivial. Of course, children will forget; and I do not say that you should always (Heaven forbid), visit Forgetfulness with severity. But do not fail to point out that Forgetfulness of Duty is generally avoidable and always culpable. If a schoolboy finds that he has a young and sympathetic teacher--prone, no doubt, sometimes himself to forget, who takes the phrase "I quite forgot!" as a valid excuse, and does not have the forgotten exercise written after school--you would be astonished, I am sure, to learn how soon forgetfulness becomes a habit to that boy, how soon it becomes as easy to him to forget regularly, as it is to his perhaps less gifted but more laborious schoolfellow to regularly write.
Yet I fancy that no one but a teacher--perhaps not even he--has ever fathomed the extraordinary depths to which real forgetfulness can go in children. I remember once keeping a boy back from football as a punishment for dipping his finger in the inkbottle and drawing pictures with inky fingers on the desk. When I came back from the Common, I went up to the detained boy in the schoolroom to look over his work and release him from durance, with an admonition not to do it again; and I began: "Well, Spencer, why have you been kept in this afternoon, while the rest of us have been enjoying ourselves in the Common?" He looked up with a sad air and dipping his finger slowly in the ink bottle as he spoke and beginning a fresh diagram on his desk, he answered sadly: "I can't remember, Sir." The baffled schoolmaster acknowledged to himself that he was beaten, and sent the boy--with his forgetful ink-stained fingers--out to play without another word.
There was a boy once at my school, who was of a dreamy poetical nature: he was the son of a well-known novelist and, as happens sometimes with people of genius, he was not fond of washing. He came down one morning with a face still wearing a very fair allowance of yesterday's dirt, and I asked him immediately: "Groves, have you washed this morning?" He looked both hands carefully over before replying, and seeing that they were fairly clean, answered decidedly, "Yes, Sir!" "But your face, Groves, your face; did you wash your face?" Either from a prudent resolve to hedge, or because he judged from the expression of my face that all was not quite well, or because he really did at last remember: "No, not my face, Sir." Then we climbed at once together to his bedroom, and found water indeed in the washing basin, but water that was absolutely clean, no trace of dirt or soap. And the soap itself in its own receptacle, more dry and hard than when it came from the store cupboard. Sponge, flannel and towel, all feeling as dry as if they had not touched water for weeks. We concluded together that he had not washed. To one who knew the boy, it seemed an act of genuine forgetfulness. We left him washing.
One more instance, and I will have done with boys. Throwing stones is forbidden on our school premises, as well as in all roads and public places: not from pedagogic vindictiveness or because we wish to make little lives miserable by prohibitions; but because we have known serious injuries result from stone-throwing in a crowd. As I was passing through the playground one morning, a comparatively new boy, who was standing with his back to me and did not see me, stopped when I was about three yards from him, picked up a stone and threw it at another boy. Before he had recovered himself from the action of throwing, I put my hand on his shoulder and said, "Williams! throwing stones in the playground!" Instantly, without a moment's hesitation and with an air of most reproachful innocence:--"I, Sir! no, Sir! I didn't shy a stone, Sir!" I took him in and he paid the penalty prescribed for stone-throwing. But all the same, I could not help wondering, as I reflected on the indignant air of innocence with which he denied the action committed under my very nose, whether it were possible that he had, even in that moment of time, completely forgotten. This could only be possible on the assumption that stone-throwing had become with him a habit, and was done automatically (as we wind up our watches and forget that we have wound them); so that I felt quite sure that, in my case, the penalty was not misapplied. But boys are funny creatures and unfathomable in other ways as well as in their ability to forget.
And well it is for the boy that he can sometimes forget! If he forgets his Latin verbs and multiplication tables, and rules of discipline, he forgets also, with most commendable celerity, the punishments and scoldings; and is as cheerful and friendly almost at once, as if no cloud had ever arisen between you. I saw a man once beat a retriever dog quite cruelly, and then immediately fling the whip over and eight foot wall and send the dog for it, to show the poor creature's docility and forgiving disposition. The dog leaped the wall without hesitation and in a few seconds laid the whip fawning at his master's feet. Boys are like that. I do not mean that they are beaten cruelly, or that they leap eight foot walls, but that, like good old Sir Anthony, they are always ready to "forgive and forget."
Staying in Scotland some few years ago, before I had begun to regard myself as anything but quite a young man, I heard a dear old Presbyterian minister read prayers one morning, and in the course of his prayer, he gave thanks for--among other blessings--this: that a knowledge of the future is mercifully concealed from us. It was a new idea to me; indeed, I had often before this thought how pleasant it would be to have the power of foreseeing things to come. But I too, now that I am older, am thankful for the merciful concealment. And I count, moreover, another cause for thankfulness in this: that we are, to a large extent, enabled mercifully to forget the past.
Some things it is well that we should not forget, and some we would forget, but cannot, though we would. The sight of an upturned drowning face, with no one but children by--no strong man near to stretch out a hand and save!
The sound of a madman's cry for "help" as they caught him coming out of church on Sunday morning and took him off to the asylum.
And "worse than worst," the smell of the still smouldering cottage, burnt down in the night with its sleeping occupants!
These are memories that can never be entirely forgotten, and that will come back from time to time after nearly forty years, with a vividness still almost terrifying.
But of all the sadness, sorrow and disappointment, which crowd in upon us almost daily as we grow older, how much--how appallingly much!--is there that we do forget utterly, sometimes unconsciously to ourselves, sometimes of set purpose putting it resolutely behind us, that we may still, notwithstanding disappointment, sorrow and sadness, have vigour and freshness to do our daily work. And happy it is that--kindly Nature helping us--we are so often able to forget.
Proofread by LNL, Jun. 2011