shape. When things are simply incoherent and meaningless we cannot remember them any more than we can observe them. We may remember that there was something incoherent, but we cannot remember or describe it without giving it a certain coherence, even if it be a coherence of absurdity. When some one makes a meaningless speech we either give it a reasonable meaning, forget it altogether, or make it a kind of monstrosity far worse than it really was. If it does not make a definite impression of some kind or other, we forget it. If it does, we fill in all the details to fit our notion of the whole. It is the same way in our recollection of an argument or a quarrel. We were right and our opponent was wrong; and we remember our good sayings or acts and his bad ones because they fit in with the impression of our rightness, and forget our bad sayings or acts and his good ones because they do not fit in with this impression and are therefore in a sense purely irrelevant. Or it may be that we are impressed with the wrongness of our case, and then we go to the other extreme and remember our own bad sayings and acts and his good ones and forget our own good and his bad. In either *Mere illusions of memory suggested by present impressions are common in normal life. As we apperceive any object or event through the media of the feelings and ideas in consciousness at the moment, and thus no two of us apperceive the same thing in the same way, so in recollection each apperceives the past from the standpoint of his present state of consciousness, and the latter bears its part in determining what the resulting recollections shall be. We remember only main features of an event anyway, and the imagination fills in the gaps. membrance is never a true reproduction of reality. It is always more or less an illusion. At best it is an approximation to the truth. How near an approximation depends largely upon the apperceptive mood of the moment." (W. H. Burnham, "Memory", Am. Jour. of Psychology, II, 449-50.) Thus re Consistency according to the laws of nature is the only test of truth; but consistency in conduct is consistency according to a purpose, and this is only an ideal. When a person tells a story that makes all his acts or all the acts of his hero rational and consistent, we can be quite sure that it is not true, case the recollection is distorted by the almost inevitable tendency to remember things as coherent wholes capable of brief and definite description and congruent with the emotion of the moment. As memory distorts the inner content of an experience itself, so it may easily distort its relation to other experiences; and then we get the dates and places wrong. We feel that experience A must have taken place in connection with B, possibly because that is the logical order, possibly because we have often thought of them together; and yet as a matter of fact they may have been miles or months apart. lies. Serious consequences often result from this erroneous ' recollection' of the connections between experiences and Honest the corresponding forgetfulness of their real connections. If we remember a dream or a fancy with such vividness that it has the feeling of reality and do not remember the outward relations that would clearly distinguish it as a dream or fancy, it will seem to us that what we are remembering is not fancy but fact, and we easily fill in the connections that facts like those remembered' ought to have. Thus there are people who lie, and lie habitually, with the very best faith. The only possible remedy for this unconscious lying is to distrust one's own memory and deliberately test or verify one's 'recollections' in every case of importance; and if one does not wish to be deceived by others, he must distrust theirs too. Lawyers are proverbially unsatisfactory witnesses, simply because they know how uncertain memory is, and only say 'I think so', when others far less accurate and careful say 'I know'; and of course the confident assertions of the man who knows' carry far more weight with the ordinary juryman than the hesitating beliefs of the one who only thinks so'. "The medico-legal aspect of this subject is of the most practical importance. The more common forms of paramnesia [or false memory] . . . show that it is not impossible to manufacture testimony. A member of the bar tells me that this is actually done in some cases, the method employed being somewhat as follows: The witness is a person of deficient memory. It is desirable that he should testify to the Occurrence of a certain event. The lawyer asks the witness if he remembers this event. The reply is, No; and nothing more is said. But the idea of the event has been suggested to the mind of the witness. In a few weeks the lawyer repeats the same question, and again receives a negative answer. But after a few similar experiments the witness becomes uncertain whether he remembers the event in question or not. He begins to think that he does. The images of the imagination suggested by the lawyer's questions loom up vaguely in the mind, the memory is confused, and in a few months the lawyer, if skilful, may develop a pseudo-reminiscence so strong that the witness will give the desired testimony with complete sincerity. Of course this cannot succeed with persons of strong memory and critical judgment, but with children and aged people it may not be difficult. "Nothing, as Motet says, is more effective than a child's story of the details of a crime of which he pretends to have been a witness or a victim. The child's naïveté adds to the interest and elicits confidence. His hearers urge him on by their sympathy. Parents, friends, and neighbors accept the account, true or false. They suggest new details and fill up the gaps in the story. The child's uncritical mind assimilates these details, repeats the story without variation, and makes his accusation before the magistrate with an apparent accuracy that is most telling. . . "The uncertainty of human testimony was notably illustrated a few years ago in the case of the Bell Telephone Co. vs. the People's Telephone Co. The chief point at issue was whether Daniel Drawbaugh had a telephone in his shop prior to 1876. Several hundred witnesses gave testimony bearing directly or indirectly upon this point. The honesty of most of the witnesses seems to have been admitted, yet evidence offered by one side was generally refuted by testimony from the other. The Supreme Court divided upon the case, and the seven thousand printed pages of evidence in the suit seem rather to prove the fallibility of human testimony than anything else. See article on Daniel Drawbaugh, by H. C. Merwin, Atlantic Monthly, Sept., 1888." * Resulting commonplaces. Since memory is always unreliable, almost the first thing. for one who is doing scientific work of any sort, no matter how humble, to learn is the importance of keeping full and clear records of every detail of his experiments or observations that may have the slightest bearing on the question at issue. If a detail is to be preserved at all, it must be taken down at once; it is usually almost as easy to take down a point of doubtful value as to neglect it, and the best and most accurate of experimenters are only too liable to find their work less valuable than it might otherwise have been because there was some small detail of which they did not make a note. Most beginners need to be warned, too, not to keep notes on loose scraps of paper, not to use unfamiliar abbreviations without writing down their meaning, and to make their writing very legible. If they themselves are to be sure of its meaning, the record should be so clear and unambiguous that it could be easily understood by any one. In other words, it should be a true record, and not a mere series of suggestions for the memory. It is important, too, to number the pages (unless the record is in a book) and to leave plenty of blank space on each of them. There is a strong tendency to get things crowded some time or other before the results are finally computed, and a crowded record is very confusing. Finally, the notes should be indexed and put away in such order that they can be found at a moment's notice for years afterwards. To observe these simple precautions is to save much time and annoyance for everybody concerned; and what is said here * W. H. Burnham, loc. cit. |