Memory and its Diseases [pp. 100-111]

1882.] MEMoRY AND ITS DIsEASES. 103
the medium through which spirit mysteriously works, and that
such working leaves an indelible trace upon the cells, by virtue
of which they lend themselves more readily to the service of the
mind-a fact of which the mind becoming cognizant is reminded that it had passed through a similar experience previously.
Applying these principles to a concrete case, let us see what takes
place in the acquisition of the knowledge of locomotion. The
first attempts are painful, clumsy, and laborious; the movements
are badly co-ordinated and the tiny toddler often comes to grief.
During this time the child is painfully conscious of the efforts
he is making, till the repeated discharge of nervous power engenders in the nerve-cells concerned an organized aptitude for
the performance of the act and consciousness ~~~t~~~~~t~5 less
and less in the proceeding. At last a secondary automatic action
is established, and soon the child walks and runs without the
slightest advertence to his movements. According to %Ilaudsley
and Ribot, the nerve-cells and filaments which preside over
locomotion become endowed with memory-i.e., they conserve
traces engendered by organic changes, and these they reproduce
whenever the will commands the action.
An initial act of the will alone distinguishes such secondary
automatic actions as walking, fingering the keys of a piano or
the strings of a violin, etc., from the primary automatic actions
of winking or raising the hand to avert a blow. When fully
established as automatic these actions have their root in an organized aptitude consisting of conservation and reproduction,
and are thus, according to the physiologists in question, the result of the essential conditions of memory. Consciousness, accordingly, is not essential to memory, and nerve-cells distributed
throughout the various ganglia of the body can with propriety
be said to remember. This is materialism pure and simple, since
it removes one of our most important intellectual functions from
the domain of the mind considered as a distinct entity from the
body. Now, while we admit all the facts which modern physiology has brought to light, we contend that no such conclusion is
necessarily entailed. In the first place, the ordinary usage of
every language is violated; for no matter how gre at an aptitude may be engendered in an organ through repeated action,
no one outside of Messrs. Maudsley and Ribot would attempt to
say that it remembers. Inde~d, the admission is attended with a
palpable absurdity into which M. Ribot is unwittingly betrayed,
but which Dr. Maudsley vainly attempts to evade. Ribot says:
"Our psychological (i.e., conscious) mem~ry is ignorant of the