ciated with psychic processes, had to be surveyed; the author has also made original studies and observations among the insane where memory defects are a striking feature; he has interviewed a large number of aged people, and has also employed the questionnaire method in Chapter VI in perhaps as thorough and comprehensive a way as it has yet been used here, and his results based upon statistical studies and tabulations of which the text gives no intimation are contributions of real value to contemporary psychology. He has given some attention not only to mnemonic methods, but also to the questions of practical pedagogy, recitations, and examinations so far as connected with memory training, so that practical teachers will find this a serviceable vade mecum. Despite the many special laboratory, clinical, and other studies of memory and countless theoretical exploitations of the subject, a plain, simple, scientific handbook was still lacking, so that from the practical point of view, as well as from the service always rendered by juxtaposing and comparing different aspects of great subjects, such a book as this is very opportune. It is easy, as some have done, to interpret all mental activities and phenomena from the standpoint of memory, loss of which means mental vacuity. As all psychic activities are conditioned by retentiveness of some kind; as this conservating faculty not only fills the conscious but also dominates the unconscious soul and rules even the nervous system; as all the past in the life of the race and individual is committed to its keeping, aided by mnemonic devices as well as history, the problem of specially cultivating it in the wisest and most effective way includes a large part of the whole problem of education. From the larger point of view all the motor activities from creeping and walking, up, all intellectual acquisitions and emotional endowments and attributes, to say nothing of reason, will, and imagination, the formation and exercise of common sense, of taste and critical judgment, are all of them in a sense and at root special features of the memory problem. Apart from the conclusions drawn by the author, these pages are suggestive; they will stimulate other conclusions in the mind of every serious reader, and, as I hope and believe, will tend toward a larger and more generic view of the subject by specialists and the better conformity to the true laws and phenomena of memory on the part of teachers. Résumé of writings upon Memory by Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans, Cicero, Quintilian, St. Augustine, Locke, Descartes, Malebranche, Bonnet, Condillac, Reid, Stewart, Hume, Hamilton, Hartley, James Mill, Bain, Spencer, Kant, Herbart, Steinthal, Horwicz, Wundt, Jessen, Hering, Ribot, Maudsley, Draper, Verneuil, Luys, Flechsig, Lotze, Fauth, Huber, Fouillée, Biervliet, Bergson, Burnham, James, Ladd, Baldwin, Dewey, Donaldson, Titchener (Experimental) Development of the Psychical Memory. The develop- ment of Organic Memory. Organic memory considered in migrations of birds, animals, and insects; in passive instincts of defence and dying instincts; in instincts for blood and bright colors; robbing, building, and human influences. Ribot's law of Regression. Experience of ferences. In- localization. Medullation. Conditions of intelligence. Hypothesis of genetic parallelism and functional inter- action illustrated. Feelings. Memories: analogies of; atavistic, muscular, secondary automatic, motor, topo- graphical, visual, intuitive, auditory, olfactory, gusta- Difficulty of getting early memories. Kinds of memo- ries. Memories belonging to different periods of life. We retain a memory complex and from it select memories in harmony with the psychical life of the period con- sidered memory tone. No progressive fading out of memories. Years best and poorest recalled. False and inverted memories. Books best recalled. Recollection of pleasant and unpleasant experiences. Studies which develop memory. Loss of memory; aids to memory. |