actively to see or to hear. For this reason it is foolish to ask anybody how it happened that he perceived less than another, because both have equally good senses and were able to perceive as much. On the other hand, the grade of activity each has made use of in perception is rarely inquired into, and this is the more unfortunate because memory is often proportionate to activity. If, then, we are to explain how various statements concerning contemporaneous matters, observed a long time ago, are to be combined, it will not be enough to compare the memory, sensory acuteness, and intelligence of the witnesses. The chief point of attention should be the activity which has been put in motion during the sense perception in question.

(b) The Forms of Reproduction. There is a series of phenomena for which we possess particular types of images which often have little to do with the things themselves. . . . Lotze shows correctly that memory never brings back a blinding flash of light, or the overpowering blow of an explosion with the intensity of the image in proper relation to the impression. . . . Maudsley points out correctly that we can have no memory of pain. But one need not limit one's self to pain, but may assert that we lack memory of all unpleasant sensations. The first time one jumps into the water from a very high springboard, the first time one's horse rises over a hurdle, or the first time the bullets whistle past one's ear in battle, are all most unpleasant experiences, and whoever denies it is deceiving himself or his friends. But when we think of them we feel that they were not so bad, that one merely was very much afraid, etc. But this is not the case; there is simply no memory for these sensations.

This fact is of immense importance in examination. I believe that no witness has been able effectively to describe the pain caused by a body wound, the fear roused by arson, the fright at a threat, not, indeed, because he lacked the words to do so, but because he had not sufficient memory for these impressions, and because he has nothing to-day with which to compare them. Time, naturally, in such cases makes a great difference, and if a man were to describe his experiences shortly after their uncomfortable occurrence, he would possibly remember them better than he would later on. But these ideas may be not only voluntarily brought up; we have also a certain degree of power in making these images clearer and more accurate. It is rather foolish to have the examiner invite the witness to "exert his memory, to give himself the trouble, etc." This effects nothing, or something wrong. But if the examiner is willing to take the trouble, he may excite the imagination of the witness and give him the opportunity to exercise his power over the imagination. How this is done depends naturally upon the nature and education of the witness, but the judge may aid him just as the skillful teacher may aid the puzzled pupil to remember. When the pianist has completely forgotten a piece of music that he knew very well, two or three chords may lead him to explicate these chords forward or backward, and then one step after another he reproduces the whole piece. Of course the chords which are brought to the mind of the player must be properly chosen or the procedure is useless. . . . Whatever may especially occur to aid the memory of an event, occurs best at the place where the event itself happened, and, hence, one cannot too insistently advise the examination of witnesses, in important cases, only in loco rei sitæ. . . . Then the differences between what has passed, what has been later added, and what is found

to-day can be easily determined by sticking to the rule of Uphues, that the recognition of the present as present is always necessary for the eventual recognition of the past. Kant has already suggested what surprising results such an examination will give: "There are many ideas which we shall never again in our lives be conscious of, unless some occasion cause them to spring up in the memory." But such a particularly powerful occasion is locality, inasmuch as it brings into play all the influences which our senses are capable of responding to.

It is characteristic, as is popularly known, that memory can be intensified by means of special occasions. It is Höfler's opinion that the Spartan boys were whipped at the boundary stones of their country in order that they might recall their position, and even nowadays our peasants have the custom, when setting up new boundary stones, of grasping small boys by the ears and hair in order that they shall the better remember the position of the new boundary mark when, as grown men, they will be questioned about it. This being the case, it is safer to believe a witness when he can demonstrate some intensely influential event which was contemporaneous with the situation under discussion, and which reminds him of that situation.

(c) The Peculiarities of Reproduction. The differences in memory which men exhibit are not, among their other human qualities, the least. As is well known, this difference is expressed not only in the vigor, reliability, and promptness of their memory, but also in the field of memory, in the accompaniment of rapid prehensivity by rapid forgetfulness, or slow prehensivity and slow forgetfulness, or in the contrast between narrow, but intense memory, and broad but approximate memory.

m

Certain special considerations arise with regard to the field of greatest memory. As a rule, it may be presupposed that a memory which has developed with especial vigor in one direction has generally done this at the cost of memory in another direction. Thus, as a rule, memory for numbers and memory for names exclude each other. My father had so bad a memory for names that very frequently he could not quickly recall my Christian name, and I was his own son. Frequently he had to repeat the names of his four brothers until he hit upon mine, and that was not always a successful way. When he undertook an introduction it was always: "My honored m m," "The dear friend of my youth m m.' On the other hand, his memory for figures was astounding. He noted and remembered not only figures that interested him for one reason or another, but also those that had not the slightest connection with him, and that he had read merely by accident. He could recall instantaneously the population of countries and cities, and I remember that once, in the course of an accidental conversation, he mentioned the production of beetroot in a certain country for the last ten years, or the factory number of my watch that he had given me fifteen years before and had never since held in his hand.

m

Such various developments are numerous and of importance for us, because we frequently are unwilling to believe the witness testifying in a certain field for the reason that his memory in another field had shown itself to be unreliable... These fields seem to be of a remarkably narrow extent. Besides specialists (numismatists, zoölogists, botanists, heralds, etc.) who, apart from their stupendous memory for their particular matters, appear

to have no memory for other things, there are people who can remember only rhymes, melodies, shapes, forms, titles, modes, service, relationships, etc. . . It is a matter of experience that the semi-idiotic have an excellent memory and can accurately reproduce events which are really impressive or alarming, and which have left effects upon them. Many a thing which normal people have barely noticed, or which they have set aside in their memory and have forgotten, is remembered by the semi-idiotic and reproduced. On the contrary, the latter do not remember things which normal people do, and which in the latter frequently have a disturbing influence on the important point they may be considering. Thus the semi-idiotic may be able to describe important things better than normal people. . . .

Similar experiences are yielded in the case of the memory of children. Children and animals live only in the present, because they have no historically organic ideas in mind. They react directly upon stimuli, without any disturbance of their idea of the past. This is valid, however, only for very small children. At a later age children make good witnesses, and a wellbrought-up boy is the best witness in the world. We have only to keep in mind that later events tend in the child's mind to wipe out earlier ones of the same kind. . . . Bolton, who has made a systematic study of the memory of children, comes to the familiar conclusion that the scope of memory is measured by the child's capacity of concentrating its attention.

That aged persons have, as is well known, a good memory for what is long past, and a poor one for recent occurrences is not remarkable. It is to be explained by the fact that age seems to be accompanied with a decrease of energy in the brain, so that it no longer assimilates influences, and the imagination becomes dark and the judgment of facts incorrect.

(d) Illusions of Memory. Memory illusion, or paramnesia, consists in the illusory opinion of having experienced, seen, or heard something, although there has been no such experience, vision, or sound. It is the more important in criminal law because it enters unobtrusively and unnoticed into the circle of observation, and not directly by means of a demonstrated mistake. Hence, it is the more difficult to discover and has a disturbing influence which makes it very hard to perceive the mistakes that have occurred in consequence of it.

Everybody is familiar with the phenomenon in which the sudden impression occurs, that what is experienced has already been met with before so that the future might be predicted. . . . Sully, in his book on illusions, has examined the problem most thoroughly and he draws simple conclusions. He finds that vivacious children often think they have experienced what is told them. This, however, is retained in the memory of the adult, who continues to think that he has actually experienced it.... Dickens has dealt with this dream life in "David Copperfield." Sully adds, that we also generate illusions of memory when we assign to experiences false dates, and believe ourselves to have felt, as children, something we experienced later and merely set back into our childhood.

So, again, he reduces much supposed to have been heard, to things that have been read. Novels may make such an impression that what has been read or described there appears to have been really experienced. A name or region then seems to be familiar because we have read of something similar. It will perhaps be proper not to reduce all the phenomena of param

nesia to the same conditions. Only a limited number of them seem to be so reducible. Impressions often occur which one is inclined to attribute to illusory memory, merely to discover later that they were real but unconscious memory; the things had been actually experienced and the events had been forgotten. Aside from these unreal illusions of memory, many, if not all, others, are explicable, as Sully indicates, by the fact that something similar to what has been experienced, has been read or heard, while the fact that it has been read or heard is half forgotten or has sunk into the subconsciousness. Only the sensation has remained, not the recollection that it was read, etc. Another part of this phenomenon may possibly be explained by vivid dreams, which also leave strong impressions without leaving the memory of their having been dreams. All this may happen to anybody, well or ill, nervous or stolid. Indeed, Kräpelin asserts that paramnesia occurs only under normal circumstances. It may also be generally assumed that a certain fatigued condition of the mind or of the body renders this occurrence more likely, if it does not altogether determine it.

240. G. F. ARNOLD. Psychology of Legal Evidence. (1906. pp. 105, 403.) In Memory there is necessarily some contrast of past and present, in Retentiveness nothing but the persistence of the old. Again, though Memory includes Recognition, Recognition as such does not include Memory in which there is also remembrance of the time and circumstance in which an impression, piece of knowledge, etc., was acquired. When we find ourselves suddenly reminded by what is happening of a preceding experience exactly like it, if we are unable to assign to such representation a place in the past, instead of a belief that it happened there arises bewilderment. We distinguish Imagination from Memory because in the former there is no Recognition, and because of the fixed order and position of the ideas of what is remembered or expected as contrasted with the liberty of the imagination to transpose and change its ideas: at the same time the machinery of memory must be largely determined by men's powers of imagining which differ greatly, as will be explained later. . . . In the present chapter, unless it seems specially called for, no precise distinction will be observed between Memory and Recognition, and Retentiveness will be treated as the basis of Memory.

A man's native retentiveness depends on the brain tissue, and is unchangeable. "No amount of culture," says Professor James, "would seem capable of modifying a man's 'general retentiveness.' This is a physiological quality, given once for all with his organization and which he can never hope to change. It differs no doubt in disease and health. . . It is better in fresh and vigorous hours than when we are fagged or ill." At the same time retentiveness is affected in other ways, which we shall now proceed to consider as the conditions of memory.

The following are some of the mental conditions of memory: Firstly, as regards the circumstances of the moment of the original appearance, it depends on (a) the degree of impressiveness of the original experience, i.e. the amount of interest it awakened and of attention it excited. But (b) the absence of impressiveness may be made good by a repetition of the actual experience or by the fact of previous mnemonic revivals. Time and repetition are required for memory to be established. (c) Our state of

health and general vital power affects our ability to take in impressions. (d) The presentative element must have intensity and distinctness and also sufficient duration.

Secondly, as regards the moment of the reappearance: here the preëxisting mental conditions and association of ideas are the important matters. Every recollection is determined by some link of association, which may be either of contiguity or similarity, i.e. the original experience may have occurred at the same time or in close succession, or the sight of one place or person recalls that of another place or person. Again, a fresh and healthy brain is also required for reproduction, and we are also influenced by our emotional states, while much depends on the nature of the memories themselves. The more simple and less complex easily disappear, and those which have many strongly marked and distinctive sides are better retained. We are further aided by the recency of the occurrence and our own powers of imagination. The above is a mere summary and not intended to be exhaustive: it will be both amplified and supplemented in the course of the following pages under various heads.

No one will probably dispute that different men have different powers of memory, but the point to which we now wish to draw attention is that there are different kinds of memory. For we conceive that there cannot be a greater mistake than to assume that we can judge offhand of the possibility of an alleged act of remembrance, either by reference to our own powers or to a supposed average power of recollection, or again that we can be at all sure of how much any man can be reasonably expected to remember under any particular circumstances. We are aware that such estimates are confidently made by judges and advocates in spite of the statements of witnesses that they do actually recollect more or less than is supposed to be possible or reasonable; and the more we have studied memory and all that affects it, the less we feel disposed to accept the skeptical views of the law courts concerning it.

The varieties which we are about to speak of are pure individual differences of memory. "Idiosyncracies are frequent," says Dr. Ward, “thus we find one person has an exceptional memory for sounds, another for color, another for forms." The kinds of images employed in memory are as numerous as the different kinds of sensations, viz. visual, auditory, tactile, motor, etc. we may use them singly or cumulatively, but each has his own habits and according as visual or auditory images predominate with him, he will have a good memory for sights or sounds. The indifferent kind are those in whom one type of memory is equal to another. "The statistical investigations of Mr. F. Galton," says Professor Sully, "into the nature of visual representation, or what he calls 'visualization,' go to show that this power varies greatly among individuals (of the same race), that many persons have very little ability to call up distinct mental pictures of such familiar objects as the breakfast table." It also varies with race, sex, and age. It seems to us plain that the power of recollecting a scene will depend very much on a man's power of visualization, and if one who has got this power judges one who has not, or vice versa, his estimate of the truth of the latter's statements is likely to be very erroneous, unless he has some psychological knowledge of memory. . . . We recollect to have seen it stated more than once that an uneducated villager could not possibly have