one, From The Spectator. THE MAN WITH TWO MEMORIES. erating completely the later phase. It is quite conceivable, then, that George NickTHE curious, though by no means unex- ern may some day suddenly recover the ampled case of George Nickern, a German, memory of the first twenty years of his life, of New Orleans, who, after being all but and at the same moment lose that of the inkilled by a fall from a platform some months terval between the end of his twentieth year ago, and for many weeks entirely deprived and the date at which this second solution of the use of every sense as well as of con- of continuity might take place. These sciousness, has recovered his health com- curious phenomena suggest very forcibly pletely and his powers of mind, his mem- the question, what relation memory has to ory excepted, which at present dates en- the personal life of men. They force upon tirely from the beginning of his recovery, us the impression that, though Plato's noand is a complete blank as to all and every tion of the pre-existence of the soul during persons, words, things, his knowl- one or perhaps more than one all but utteredge of which had been acquired before the ly forgotten terms of life and experience, fall, cannot but suggest the question what the faint shadows of which sometimes flit relation memory really has to the personal obscurely before the startled mind, may be, identity of man. The lad to whom we have and probably is, a mere dream, - yet there referred seems to have been for a month at is, at least, no sort of impossibility, no sort least in a condition of complete detachment of contradiction to the ascertained possibilifrom the outer world, without any power of ties of life, in the conception. George sight, or hearing, or speech; at the end of Nickern is a living example of a man who seven weeks he had recovered these senses has pre-existed for twenty years on this and could use his tongue freely, but he earth before his own memory can authentiretained no glimmer of recollection of any cate for him any one act of his life. In his word, either of his native German or of case we happen to have plenty of witnesses English, which he had known before the of what he was and what he did, before his accident, and his own mother and other new term of life began; and we only wish, friends were to him entirely new acquaint- by the way, that the New Orleans physiances, whom he had to learn to know cians would publish an accurate and authenafresh. He had to begin acquiring the tic account of all the discontinuities and language of those around him as if he had continuities between his pre-existent life and been an infant, and his progress was almost character and his present life and character. as slow. Still, all his faculties seemed acute It is not enough to know that he has to and bright, and, dating from the origin of begin learning everything afresh. his new memory, he seemed to retain im- want to know whether his character is mapressions well. His case is not a unique terially changed, and in what direction, It is not impossible, if we may judge whether, having been, for instance, cautious by some similar cases, that he should sud- or rash, he is now the same, or of an oppodenly recover some day the whole of his site disposition, whether, having been sudden y extinguished stock of knowledge. kind or inconsiderate, he has altered or not There is an old case commonly cited in in that respect, whether his moral and works on Psychology, of a student of Phila- religious nature shows any sort of close delphia whose memory was suddenly anni- analogy to what it was before, or any very hilated by a fever. He began painfully marked contrast, whether, having been learning everything afresh, and had got as selfish, for instance, he has become disinfar as Latin and just mastered the Latin terested, or having been disinterested, he grammar, when his whole stock of previous has become selfish, whether his tastes are knowledge returned as suddenly as it left materially altered or not by the great severhim. Nay, it is even quite possible that this ance of the thread of his recollection, New Orleans lad might, if he had a fever, a word, in what respects he reminds those or a fresh fall, or any new disturbance of who knew him of what he was before the the brain, recover his old memory, and lose accident, and in what respects, besides his his new one, i. e., recover the recollection memory, he is changed. The New Orleans of all that he knew before the accident, and physicians ought to carefully investigate lose the memory of all that he has acquired and record these things, as it will be obvisince. Cases are on record of this sort of ous to every one that they are of the highalternating memory, due to some fever, the est psychological interest. But, to return first attack of which modified seriously, we to the reflections which his case suggests, suppose, the condition of the nervous sys- it is perfectly clear that what has happened, tem, and the second attack of which rein- in consequence of a special event in his duced the old condition of the brain, oblit-case, might have happened in the case of one. -- We in us, every man, supposing that all our minds the different conditions under which I live had had a previous existence, and that the them. Nothing is more certain than that in embodiment of them in our present organi- this life we are influenced by perceptions, zations which becomes complete at birth and sensations, and even, odd as it sounds had a universal tendency to snap the chain to say so, by ideas, of which we are not of memory, just as George Nickern's mem-conscious. That which is, by itself, invisiory has been snapped by his fall. Of ble, too minute to be visible, —yet course this is quite unfounded hypothesis. clearly makes some impression on our orBut it is at least a possible hypothesis. If gans of sight, and may, therefore, be said one man can lead two lives without any ray to be seen, - for it is only an aggregate of of recollection of his first life entering into magnitudes too small to be seen which conhis second life, we may all do so, if there stitutes every magnitude which we do see. were any general cause operating on all of And so, too, it is certain that there are, so at all similar to the special cause which to say, subterranean connections between we see operating on him now. Nay, in the links of many chains of association, some sense we do all lead two lives, of one which carry on our mind from one term of of which we have no record or memory, conscious thought to another, without restand of the other of which we have, - the ing even for an instant on the intermediate life of sleep and the life of waking. The link which really binds the two together, life of sleep, which Jouffroy has very and without giving us even the chance of ably shown to be in all probability one of remembering what it was. And if this be continuous intellectual activity, one of con- so, as it certainly is, - there is certainly tinuous dream, though nine-tenths of what nothing inconceivable in the notion that each we dream we immediately and utterly forget, of us may be living two or three simultaneis, as far as we know, not one of any cohe- ous lives, under different conditions in difrence, still less of progress, but of utterly ferent worlds, though, of course, there is incoherent imagery, in which we accumulate not the smallest reason to suppose that it is no experience, have no communion with any so. reality outside ourselves, and are incapable We have put these somewhat paradoxical even of self-knowledge or self-study. But hypotheses only to give still more definitenot the less is it a life, though it be a mere ness to our view, that none of them would kaleidoscope of immediately forgotten pic-touch in the least, nay, that all of them tures, and a life which, though under very assume and presuppose, -a real personal different conditions, is our own life, and no identity, uniting the dissevered and fragone else's. Well, if everybody lives two mentary lives, which we have shown or aslives, one of which is usually bound together sumed to be broken into two or more by a chain of more or less continuous memory parts, either by some failure of memory in and recollection, and one not, and if now time, or by some cleavage of it into paraland then we find an individual living two lel and uncommunicating planes. George lives, both of which are coherent in them- Nickern has already had two lives, two disselves, though they are, as regards memory, tinct reaches of consciousness, utterly exmutually exclusive, it seems quite certain clusive of each other. In what sense, that the personal self, the 'I,' is something then, is he still the same man that he was absolutely independent of memory, some- before the accident? We should say in thing which might become as independent this, that, though no obligation incurof memory as Plato suggested when he sup- red, no affection formed, no hope indulged, posed that each individual soul was sub-no fear entertained, before his accident, jected to a whole series of lives, all of them remains to him now in the form of conseparate wholes without conscious reference scious experience, yet his character is to each other, yet all of them united by doubtless still that which his previous life, some continuity of will and character which together with his recent sufferings and new makes the discipline of the one supplemen- experience, have made it, - that even the tary to the discipline of the other. Nay, it obliterated experience, though it does not is even quite conceivable that the same act consciously upon him, acts upon him mind should be leading simultaneously dif- unconsciously through the character it ferent lives under different forms of organi- helped to form, that what he now is, as a zation in a number of different worlds, moral being, depends in all probability that I may, at the moment I write, be, with- much more on his own acts during the first out knowing it as an inhabitant of this plan- twenty years of his life, of which he can et, living a distinct life and career in Mars recollect nothing, than on the few acts of and Jupiter and Saturn, in all of which lives his second infancy which have accumulated there is a principle of identity, in spite of only during two or three months. His strongly that it would be very far indeed from making "all things new." The old lives again in the new in a way that defies oblivion to wipe it out. second infancy is not, and cannot be, in other in the same directions as they had any way like his first. The store of expe- diverged in before they were suddenly rerience by which he was guided before the duced to the same level of experience. accident is gone, but the character trained The old would have, if not the same advanby that experience remains; and you tages over the young as before, or the might as well say that a blossom is inde- same disadvantages, as the case might be, pendent of the stages of seed, root, stalk, - still the greater part of their old advanand leaf, because it has no memory or rec- tages, or disadvantages; the disciord of them, as that George Nickern is so pline, or want of discipline, would be because he has lost the memory and record there, though wrapt up in the shape of a of them. No doubt his character shows species of taste or habit of mind, of which somewhat differently under its new condi- they could give no account, the caution, tions, as all our characters would show so far as it had been worked up into their differently if we had suddenly either a vast practical nature though, of course, not so accession or a vast diminution of our or- far as it was a mere memory of pain and dinary resources. Put a man under quite failure, would remain; the taste, so far as it new circumstances, and he will probably had been educated and cultivated, would appear in quite a new light; but what he remain, though it would have lost the clue is in these new circumstances is not the to its own discriminations; finally, the revless, in some sense, the resultant of what erence of mind, the devotional disposition he was in the old, and of the new influ- would be ready in the Christian, though the ences brought to bear on him. Supposing, grasp of the historical sources of it would for instance, that it were possible for the have vanished away. The destruction of whole of any nation to get up some morn-memory would be to some a vast relief, ing with a completely blank memory, the and to others a terrible loss of the best wife not knowing the husband, nor the happiness of life, but we believe very husband the wife; the mother her children, nor the children their mother; the creditor his debtors, or the debtors their creditor; in short, with every transaction clean wiped out, except those on record, and they, for the time, utterly unintelligible, because the key to the national language, as well as to all the appliances of civilization, would have been lost, yet even then, we take it, the characters of men would be so much influenced by their unrecollected and unconscious past, that, after a very few years of imparted teaching, we should probably have the same men philanthropists who were philanthropists before, burglars, or something like it who were burglars before, - misers who were misers before, selfish pursuers of pleasures who were selfish pursuers of pleasures before, and so forth. Any returning citizen who had not been included in the general blight of memory would soon perceive how the unremembered past was shooting anew in the present, and would probably make the observation that essential as memory is to the business of life and its duties, the most important influence of the past over the present is one not exerted through the memory, but through the active tendencies of emotion and character, which are unconsciously, and not consciously, due to past life. A whole nation of George Nickerns would soon become as different from each other as they were before their loss of memory, and in most cases by diverging from each From The Spectator. THE EMPIRE OF NOVELS. AN essayist, in the number of the Westminster Review published this week, asks a question which, though purely speculative, has an interest for the students of English Literature. He asserts with great justice that Fiction has attained in England a kind of" empire," which enables it to overshadow for the time almost every kind of non-political literature. Nothing except a successful journal is so much read as a successful novel, no man except a great orator has the audience of a great novelist, and no literary production whatever, not even a first-class poem, is so sure to be minutely discussed as a first-class story. To thousands of Englishmen Mr. Trollope's personages are as real as the personages of comedy were to their grandfathers, and writers like Thackeray exercise a far more decisive influence on manners, if not on opinions, than Congreve or Sheridan could have claimed. The religious world, which has frequently defied the Theatre, has been beaten by the Novel, and the masses who never open In Memoriam know Nicholas Nickleby by heart. The empire, such as it is, is undeniable; but, asks the reviewer, "Can it be held a matter of absolute certainty that the dominion of the English novel, which began in 1741, with Pamela, will prove more enduring," than that of, say, the Attic drama, which lasted only a hundred years? He makes no effort to answer his own question, but it is clear that he inclines to a negative reply; and we confess that, in spite of many present appearances, we agree, with one material qualification, in his opinion. We doubt, in fact, whether the Novel, at all events in its present shape, has not passed the zenith of its power. No opinion of a purely speculative kind is more difficult to justify by argument, and no argument can on such a point be absolutely conclusive, but there are some considerations tending towards a conclusion which our readers can readily estimate for themselves. novels are now, but we doubt if Mr. Lacy It is, for example, we believe nearly certain that while the habit of reading novels for themselves, and not merely to pass away the time, is increasing, like all other forms of reading, among the less educated, it is dying away among the more cultivated section of society. They will read only novels supposed to be exceptional either from the genius displayed in them, or the speciality of the plot they develop, or it may be something sensational or morbid in the characters depicted. Ordinary novels bore them, and as the supply of extraordinary novels is limited, the habit of novelreading rapidly declines. It is the commonest of occurrences to hear such men declare that they cannot get through novels, and the change in taste in them is sure sooner or later to be a change of taste in the public. There is no evidence of a contempt of the old kind for novels, but of a decline of regard for them which makes itself visible in the decreasing attention they command in the reviews, a decrease which has been marked for some time even in journals of a strictly literary kind. While George Eliot writes, the publication of a novel must every now and then be a liter- It may be said that as the habit of readary event; but the book of the season is ing is not likely to decline, and as novels more and more rarely a story. The pro- are the pleasantest form of light reading, duction of stories-good stories, too the supply will always keep pace with the does not decrease; but the taste for them, demand. That may be true, without af and above all, the belief in them as impor- fecting the question, which is not the sale tant works, certainly does. Similar tastes of novels, but their place in literature, their have declined before, and in all probability "empire," as the Westminster reviewer will decline again. Nobody, for example, calls it; but we are inclined to question if now thinks the production of a new comedy it is true. We suspect that as the mechanan event, or cares very much to see a first ical appliances of communication improve, representation, or is much interested in all kinds of light reading will be swallowed gossip about it, or above all, dreams of up by the most sensational of all, the hourly reading it. Comedies were read once as history of the world, its doings and its peo facts, but that seems to us the tendency of the time. ple. This tendency is already noted in America; and even in England, where people adhere longer to habits, the journal, And then comes the only serious quesand especially the journal of news, threatens tion in the whole matter. The empire of to supersede the novel. People are, on the novel, so far as the novel is more than the whole, more amused by seeing "what a passing phase of public taste, is really is going on than by reading what imagin- based on the desire of a self-conscious race ary people suffer, and that taste once ac- to look at itself in the glass, and to see itquired, lasts for life. It is as strong as a self as it were, under analysis, to study thirst for drams, and as a great many peo- itself either clothed, as with Trollope; or ple think, -we do not agree with them, nude, as with Thackeray; or under the is very little less deleterious to the mental anatomist's knife, as with the Author of palate. Owing to causes not worth dis- Romola. As long as that consciousness encussing here, it has been very little fostered dures, there will be an interest felt in the in England; but still the demand for news- best kind of novel, the novel of character; papers which for any reason are readable and authors of genius will endeavour to increases, till as the Westminster reviewer gratify it by analyses nominally fictitious, remarks, the empire of the novel is already really patient studies of living beings. disputed, and but for the lingering distaste of They cannot write autobiographies, which women for newspapers, a distaste rapidly alone from this point of view could superpassing away, it would be seriously men- sede novels, nor have they usually shown aced. The reader in fact obtains, say in much tendency to use verse as their instruan evening paper, all that he obtains in an ment, as Shakespeare did; and the probaordinary novel, a distraction, and some- bility is, therefore, that they will continue thing else besides, a distraction which is to use the novel as a vehicle for conveying not based on a fiction. He finds as many to the world the results of their vivisecstories, tragic or comic, as many charac- tion. Should the world ever cease to care ters, as many social sketches; and they are for self-introspection, for the study of the all real, all more or less true, and all de- inner man, as, for example, the Roman scribed in the style which, be it bad or world appears latterly to have done, — life good from an artistic point of view, is the growing too stern and terror too permanent easiest and pleasantest to him to read. for such occupation, -even the character Knowledge of a kind is widening, and as novel, the only true novel, will disappear; knowledge widens so does the interest felt but we see little prospect of such a catasby ordinary mankind in the daily life of the trophe. The newspaper cannot take up world. A man must have some trace of this function, there is no sign that the theaeducation to watch with interest telegrams tres will ever again attract crowds by new from three continents, but the capacity of pictures of the inner life of men, and the interest once acquired, the habit is never novel of character therefore will probably lost. Novels did not sell in America while continue. But its continuance as a mode the army was marching on Richmond, or of literary expression is not equivalent to in India during the Mutiny, and to the edu- that "empire of the novel" of which the cated there is always some event occurring reviewer speaks, that predominant system somewhere which interests men nearly as of conveying all instruction, from the subtmuch as a war or a revolution. It is be- lest to the simplest, from the deepest difcause French papers do not feel this inter-ficulties of religious inquiry to the elemenest in history, confining themselves as they do to political oratory and epigram, that they find readers for the feuilleton, for the novel which, however bright it might be, would inevitably kill an English newspaper, however dull it might be. It is not, perhaps, a very enticing prospect to forecast that the novel will ultimately give place to the news journal, a farrago of rubbishy sentiment to a collection of snippety tary facts of physical geography, through the medium of stories which has given the Novel for a moment such a preposterous place in the literature of Great Britain. The marsh need not continue because the river must find its way to the sea, and there are signs, to us welcome signs, that at no very distant period the superfluous and, as we believe, the miasmatic overflow will be dried up, leaving the soil with a new capacity for bearing new fruit. |