This power of the will over memory is, however, limited by the association of ideas. In order to recall anything by a voluntary effort we must remember the general notion of the thing or some associated idea. “For example, if I wish to remember what I supped on yesterday, either I have already remembered that I did sup, or if not yet this, at least, I have remembered something about that time itself, if nothing else; at all events, I have remembered yesterday and that part of yesterday in which people usually sup, and what supping is.”[[43]] In another place he says that, of a series of ideas the lost part is recovered “by the part whereof we had hold.”
Many since Augustine have marvelled at the miracle of memory. None have expressed their admiration more eloquently. “Great is this force of memory”, he exclaims, “excessive great, O my God; a large and boundless chamber; who ever sounded the bottom thereof? Yet is this a power of mine, and belongs unto my nature; nor do I myself comprehend all that I am. Therefore is the mind too strait to contain itself. And where should that be which it containeth, not of itself? Is it without and not within? How then doth it not comprehend itself. A wonderful admiration surprises me, amazement seizes me upon this. And men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty billows of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, and pass themselves by; nor wonder that when I spake of all these things, I did not see them with my eyes, yet could not have spoken of them, unless I then actually saw the mountains, billows, rivers, stars, which I had seen, and that ocean which I believe to be inwardly in my memory, and that, with the vast spaces between, as if I saw them abroad. Yet did not I by seeing draw them into myself, when with mine eyes I beheld them; nor are they themselves with me, but their images only. And I know by what sense of the body, each was impressed upon me.”
It is an interesting fact that Augustine noticed the possibility of illusions of memory. Certain rare phenomena—the so-called recollections of Pythagoras and others who were said to have remembered objects perceived in a former state of existence—he explains in a very modern fashion, except that he attributes these beliefs to the agency of evil spirits. “For we must not”, he says, “acquiesce in their story who assert that the Samian Pythagoras recollected some things of this kind, which he had experienced when he was previously here in another body; and others tell yet of others, that they experienced something of the same sort in their minds. But it may be conjectured that these were untrue recollections, such as we commonly experience in sleep, when we fancy we remember, as though we had done or seen it, when we never did or saw at all; and that the minds of these persons, even though awake, were affected in this way at the suggestion of malicious and deceitful spirits, whose care it is to confirm, or to sow some false belief concerning the changes of souls, in order to deceive men.”[[44]] If they truly remembered such things, he argues, such phenomena would not be as rare; but many persons would experience the same.
Perhaps the most serious criticism of Augustine’s psychology of memory is that he entirely neglects the physiological side of the subject. He does not even notice the relation of memory to states of health or disease, and of youth or age. In one place, however, he states that memory has its seat in one of the three ventricles of the brain, which is situated between that which is the seat of sensation and that which presides over of locomotion, so that our movements may be coordinated.[[45]]
The criticism has also been made that Augustine seems to waver in his conception of memory, that he sometimes represents it as the source of all our intellectual activity comparing it among the other faculties to the Father in the Trinity; that again he seems to limit this faculty to the work of preserving knowledge acquired empirically. Certainly in some passages he seems to make memory contain a kind of innate ideas that may be drawn forth by suggestion.[[46]]
But if Augustine is unsatisfactory in this, it must be remembered that he is not writing a psychology and that he was, as Ferraz calls him, a philosopher of transition. “He combats Plato’s doctrine of reminiscence, and prepares the way for the innate ideas of Descartes, without positively enough rejecting the former, and without clearly enough admitting the latter.”[[47]]
V.
The pathological side of memory seems to have been little studied by the ancients. Augustine referred to the possibility of illusions of memory in the way already mentioned. Seneca tells of a certain Sabinus who had so bad a memory that he forgot the name of Ulysses, and again of Achilles, and sometimes of Priam, though he knew them as well as we remember our schoolmasters.[[48]] Some remarkable cases of amnesia were reported to the Elder Pliny. “Nothing whatever in man,” he says, “is of so frail a nature as the memory; for it is affected by disease, by injuries, and even by fright; being sometimes partially lost and at other times entirely so. A man who received a blow from a stone forgot the names of the letters (of the alphabet) only; while, on the other hand, another person, who fell from a very high roof could not so much as recollect his mother or his relations and neighbors. Another person in consequence of some disease forgot his own servants even; and Messala Corvinus, the orator, lost all recollection of his own name.”[[49]] While these cases are good illustrations of certain diseases of memory, they are not reported with sufficient accuracy and detail to render them of much scientific value. Ancient thinkers appear not to have seen the importance of studying the pathological conditions of memory.
VI.
No historical sketch of memory among the ancient Greeks and Romans is complete without some mention of their mnemonic systems. The art of mnemonics seems to have been much in vogue among them. There are frequent allusions to this art in the works of Aristotle, Plato, and other classic writers. Aristotle is reported by some to have written a work upon mnemonics. Every scholar of the classics is familiar with the story that ascribes the invention of the art to Simonides.