An Historical Sketch of the Conceptions of Memory among the Ancients

Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
Submitted as a Thesis
William H. Burnham,
Candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Johns Hopkins University,
Baltimore.
1888.
Memory.
Mnemosyne, Hesiod tells us, was the mother of the Muses. Without speculating as some have done about the reasons for this myth it is interesting as showing an appreciation of the fundamental nature of memory and some sort of crude introspective psychology dating back possibly to pre-historic times.
The psychology of the Ionian school of philosophers, as far as they can be said to have had any at all, was sensationalism. Their views of memory must be conjectured from the fundamental principles of their philosophy.
Heraclitus, one might suppose, would study memory carefully, but in the fragments of his philosophy that have come down to us nothing is said upon the subject.