James, who considered that phenomenal memories were accounted for by the exceptional persistence or permanence of the "paths" of thought, a purely physiological property of the brain-tissue of the individual, quotes a case within his own experience which, if we accept Hudson's theory, affords a typical illustration of the facility possessed by some men of drawing upon the knowledge of their own subjective minds.
"What these cases show is that the mere organic retentiveness of a man need bear no definite relation to his other mental powers. Men of the highest general powers will often forget nothing, however insignificant. One of the most generally accomplished men I know has a memory of this sort. He never keeps written note of anything, yet is never at a loss for a fact which he has once heard. As an instance of his desultory memory, he was introduced to a certain colonel at a club. The conversation fell upon the signs of age in man. The colonel challenged him to estimate his age. He looked at him, and gave the exact day of his birth, to the wonder of all. But the secret of this accuracy was that, having picked up some days previously an army register, he had idly turned over its list of names with the dates of birth, graduation, promotion, etc., attached, and when the colonel's name was mentioned to him at the club, these figures, on which he had not bestowed a moment's thought, involuntarily surged up in his mind."
It is hoped that the foregoing has made it clear that a distinction exists between the normal or objective memory, or recollection, which is capable of cerebral localization, and the subjective memory, which appears to be absolute and without anatomical basis. The very fact that the normal memory is most efficient when the brain is healthy, and the remarkable powers of the subjective memory are seen to the best advantage when the brain is diseased or dormant, serves to emphasize the distinction. This, too, explains the otherwise unaccountable fact that quite abnormal memories are sometimes possessed by imbeciles equally with men of genius, especially that type of ecstatic mind often mistaken for genius by the world. Mr. Bernard Shaw, laying great emphasis on the distinction, proclaims the domination of will, not reason, as the mark of genius in art.[63] But the distinction is superfluous and misleading: it is just that type of "genius" (?), fruitful when the will is anæsthetized and the range and wealth of the subjective mind given free play, whose works degenerate into decadent mysticism; it is when reason ceases to direct the course of genius that the subjective stratum dominates the throne; and the mind, fed and nourished by the deep-seated lusts of the body, grows mad with the exuberance of its own descriptive powers.
FOOTNOTES:
[41] The principal checks to population enumerated by Malthus were normally: vice, misery and celibacy or moral restraint, and such occasional resorts of nature to repress a too redundant population (an evil aggravated considerably in countries where population is forced to the limits of its means of subsistence by poor-laws and grants in aid of families), as wars and famine.
[42] The "unfit" denotes the diseased, criminals, paupers and lunatics. See "The Fertility of the Unfit," by W. A. Chapple, for an able exposition of the economic causes underlying the alarming increase in the unfit population.
[43] E. Haeckel, "Riddle of the Universe."
[44] "The False Alarm," a pamphlet on the Middlesex election of 1770.
[45] "The Purpose of Education" (1915), by St. George Lane Fox-Pitt.
[46] "Psychic Phenomena," by I. J. Hudson, p. 29.