Unconscious Memory

wald Hering

ive language is German, but who has resided in England for many years past. The original lecture is entitled "On Memory as a Universal Function of

at great riddle, to the solution of a small part of which he devotes his life. Those, however, whom he leaves behind him still working at their own special branch of inquiry, regard his departure with secret misgivings on his behalf

ng land of speculation, but bearing in mind what I have just said, I will beware of quitting the department of natural science to which I ha

themselves solely to physiology. I hope to show how far psychological investigation

s the province of physiology to explore; and as long as the atoms of the brain follow their due course according

lainly in the more highly organised animals; even the lowest forms of life bear traces of it; a

of the organised world? Shall she close them entirely to one wh

he physiologist neither more nor less than the matter of which they consist. That animals feel desire and repugnance, that the material mechanism of the human frame is in chose connection with emotions of pleasure or pain, and with the active idea-life of consciousness-this cannot, in the eyes of the physicist, make the animal or human body into anything more than

hrough my brain as an actual and material process before it can reach the nerves which will act upon my organs of speech. It cannot, on reaching a given place in the brain, change then and there into an immaterial something, and turn up again some time afterwards in another part of the brain as a ma

he performance, which is, nevertheless, caught easily by one who sees it from the front. May he not, then, for once in a way, be allowed to change his standpoint? True, he came not to see the representation of an imaginary world; he is in search of the actual; but surely

in small part is that she has hitherto made such little use of this assistance; for psychology has been late in beginning to till her fertile f

e according to the inductive method, and will hence, as much as the physicist, make the existence of fixed laws his initial assumption. If, again, the most superficial introspection teaches the physiologist that his conscious life is dependent upon the mechanical adjustments of his body, and that inversely his body is subjected wi

function"-the material processes of brain substance become functions of the phenomena of consciousness. For when two variables are so dependent upon one another in the chang

er and consciousness-stand in the relation of cause and effect, anteced

f consciousness, and a third maintains that matter and spirit are identical; with all this the physiologist, as such, ha

t, he sees sound waves of speech issue from the mouth of a speaker; he observes the motion of his own limbs, and finds how this is conditional upon muscular contractions occasioned by the motor nerves, and how these nerves are in their turn excited by the cells of the central organ. But here again his knowledge comes to an end. True, he sees indications of the bridge which is to carry him from excitation of the sensory to that of the motor nerves in the labyrinth of intricately interwoven nerve cells, but he knows nothing of the inconceivably complex process which is introduced at this stage. Here the physiologist will change his standpoint; what matter will not reveal to his i

g to do with one another, and which belong partly to the conscious and partly to the unconscious life of organised beings. I sh

our minds, is not this also an act of recollection or memory? We have a perfect right to extend our conception of memory so as to make it embrace involuntary reproductions, of sensations, ideas, perceptions, and eff

ciousness with all the force and freshness of the original sensation. A whole group of sensations is sometimes reproduced in its due sequence as regards time and space, with so much reality that it illudes us, as though things were actually present which have long ceased to be so. We have here a striking proof of the fact that after both conscious

or less faded recollections of earlier impressions, which we either summon intentionally or which come upon us involuntarily. Visions of absent people

ter upon it more easily and energetically; hence also their aptitude for reproduction is enhanced; so that what is common to many things, and is therefore felt and perceived with exceptional frequency, becomes reproduced so easily that eventually the actual presence of the corresponding external stimuli is no longer necessary, and it will recur on the vibrations set up by faint stimuli from within. [70] Sensations

with which they were originally associated, and attain an independent existence in our consciousness as ideas and conce

ey do not exist continuously as ideas; what is continuous is the special disposition of nerve substance in virtue of which this substance gives out to-day the same sound which it gave yesterday if it is rightly struck. [71] Countless reproductions of organic processes of our brain connect themselves orderly together, so that one acts as a stimulus to the next, but a phenomenon of consciousness is not necessarily attached to every link in the chain. From this it arises that a series of ideas may appear to disregard the order that would be observed in purely material processes of brain substance unaccompanied by consciousness; but on the other hand it becomes possible for a long chain of recollections to have its due development without each link in the chain being nec

-as, in fact, for purely experimental purposes, "matter" and the "unconscious" must be one and the same thing-so the physiologist has a full right to denote memory as, in the wider sense of the word, a functi

s of light and shade upon its surface. I form a correct appreciation of its distance from my eye, and hence again I deduce an inference as to the size of the ball. What an expenditure of sensations, ideas, and inferences is found to be necessary before all this

and difficult, requiring constant and conscious attention, come to reproduce themselves in transient and abridg

ed by our unconsciousness of many whole series of ideas and of the inferences we draw from them. If the soul is not to ship through the fingers of physiology, she must hold fast to the considerations suggested by our unco

are necessary in order to effect it. How long does it not take each note to find its way from the eyes to the fingers of one who is beginning to learn the pianoforte; and, on the other hand, what an astonishing performance is the playing of the professional pianist. The sight of each note occasions the corresponding movement

central nerve system, by means of which movement is effected, were not able [74a] to reproduce whole series of vibrations, which at an earlier date required the constant and continuous participation of consciousness, but which are now set in motion automatically on a mere touch, as it were, from consciousness-if it were not able to reproduce them the more quickly and easily in proportion to the frequency of the repetitions-if, in fact, there was no power of recollecting earlier performances? Our perceptive faculties must have remained always at their lowest

d from this source. Memory collects the countless phenomena of our existence into a single whole; and as our bodies would be scattered into the dust of their component atoms if they we

d in other and not less important respects. This is also confirmed by numerous facts in the life of that part of the nervous system which ministers almost exclusively to our unconscious life processes. For the

of the nervous system, and glance hurriedly at other phases of organised mat

posed towards the same kind of work, and has a greater aptitude for repetition of the same organic processes. It gains also in weight, for it assimilates more matter than when constantly at rest. We have here, in its simplest form, and in a phase which comes home most closely to the comprehension of the physicist, the same power of reproduction which we encountered when we were dealing with nerve substa

ar to be repetitions of the same cell. This growth, and multiplication of cells is only a special phase of those manifold functions which characterise organised matter, and which consist not only in what goes on within the cell substance as alterations or undulatory movement of the molecular disposition, but also in that which become

characteristics of an organism may descend to offspring which the organism did not inherit, but which it acquired owing to the special circumstances under which it lived; and that, i

in a high degree mysterious how those parts can have any kind of influence upon a germ which develops itself in an entirely different place. Many mystical theories h

by means of the living, irritable, and therefore highly conductive substance of other cells. Through the connection thus established all organs find themselves in such a condition of more or less mutual interdependence upon one another, that events which happen to one are repeated in others,

scious and unconscious life of the whole organism. We may see this from the fact that the organ of reproduction stands in closer and more important relation to the remaining parts, and especially to the

ed between the acquired peculiarities of an organism, and the proclivity on the part

cannot, however, be objected on this account that the determining cause of its ulterior devel

finitely small segment to be taken from every possible curve; each one of these will appear as like every other as one germ is to another, yet the whole of every

of position on the part of a point, or in the relations of the parts of a segment of a curve to one another, suffices to alter the law of its whole path, and so in like manner an in

ccomplice? [79] When an action through long habit or continual practice has become so much a second nature to any organisation that its effects will penetrate, though ever so faintly, into the germ that lies within it, and when this last comes to find itself in a new sphere, to extend itself, and develop into a new creature-(the individual parts of which are still always the creature itself and flesh of its flesh, so that what is reproduced is the same being as that in company with which

a reproduction, moreover, that goes as far as possible into detail. We are so accustomed to consider family resemblance a matter of course, that we are sometimes surprised when a child is

to the parent, and which have happened through countless generations to the organised matter of which the germ of to-day is a fragment? We cannot wonder that action already taken on in

ving that at the beginning of this chain there existed an organism of the very simplest kind, something, in fact, like those which we call organised germs. The chain of living beings thus appears to be the magnificent achievement of the reproductive power of the original organic structure from which they have all descended. As this

r dividing itself, ever assimilating new matter and returning it in changed shape to the inorganic world, ever receiving some new thing

considering. As a complicated perception may arise by means of a rapid and superficial reproduction of long and laboriously practised brain processes, so a germ in the course of its development hurries through a series of phases, hinting at them only. Often and long foreshado

her ran off before it; yet what an extraordinary complication of emotions and sensations is necessary in order to preserve equilibrium in running. Surely the supposition of an inborn capacity for the reproduction of these

er to do this, more is wanted than a mere visual perception of the grains; there must be an accurate apprehension of the direction and distance of the precise spot in which each grain is lying, and there must be no less accuracy in the adjustment of the movem

re accustomed to regard these surprising performances of animals as manifestations of what we call instinct, and the mysticism of natural philosophy has ever shown a predilection for this theme; but if we regard instinct as the outcome of the memory or reproductive power of organised substance, and if we ascribe a memory to the race as we already ascribe it to the individu

mistakes. They feel pleasure when their work advances and pain if it is hindered; they learn by the experience thus acquired, and build on a second occasion better than on the first; but that even in the outset they hit so readily upon the most judicious way of achieving their purpose, and that their movements adapt th

innumerable generations of spiders acquired it toilsomely and step by step-this being about all that, as a general rule, they did acquire. Man took to bows and arrows if his nets failed him-the spider starved. Thus we see the body and-what most concerns us-the whole nervous system of the n

ings. The brain of man may be said to be exceptionally young at birth. The lower animal is born precocious, and acts precociously; it resembles those infant prodigies whose brain, as it were, is born old into the world, but who, in spite of, or rather in addition to, their rich endowment at birth, in after life develop as much mental power as others who were less splendidly furnished to start with, but born with great

d easily than would be otherwise possible; but what we call instinct in the case of animals takes in man the looser form of aptitude, talent, and genius. [84] Granted that certain ideas are not innate, yet the fact of their taking form so easily and certainly from out of the chaos of his sensations, is due not to his own labour, but to that of the brain substance of the thousands of thousands of generations from whom he i

ganic world. It is in respect of these instincts, therefore, and of the means to gratify them, that the memory of organised substance is strongest-the impulses and instincts that arise hence having still paramount power over the minds of men. The spiritual li

ech or letters, are yet nothing for heads that are out of harmony with them; they must be not only heard, but reproduced; and both speech and writing would be in vain were there not an inheritance of inward and outward brain development, growing in correspondence with the inheritance of ideas that are handed down from age to age, and did not an enhanc