sane, - either for the purpose of reading or writing, and had to learn afresh after the age of seventy to decipher even the familiar passages, in the New Testament and elsewhere, which she had never forgotten how to recite, and of which she grasped the full significance. In point of fact, nothing is more arbitrary, of those various converging trains of association by which we recover so many lost facts, than the connection between the sounds and the shapes of the letters, and nothing that we know in life is more com tion, by mere rote. We do not wonder, then, that in the case of a sudden failure of memory, unattended by any loss of selfconsciousness, the loss should fall upon the earliest links of purely arbitrary associations, i.e., associations formed by contiguity in time between a certain set of sounds and a certain set of forms, but not associations even of the same organ of sense, and not associations which more than one monotonous set of experiences had ever rivetted. It was only like losing the link of connection between the keys of a piano and the notes they would strike, -a sort of knowledge which, if unconnected with any scientific rationale, would, we should think, be very apt to go, as self-consciousness can enter exceedingly little into the process of learning it. All mere rote-knowledge, in which the more completely you suppress your own reflective powers, the quicker you get on, is pretty sure to go first. For it is the knowledge of self which is the root of memory, and hence of the period before the child gains a knowledge of itself, as distinguished from its mere sensations, it can recollect nothing. All the arbitrary rote-processes, therefore, into which self-knowledge enters very slightly indeed, are pretty sure to ooze away first. recognize a room, by the furniture it contains, by the position of the fire and the windows, and the books and the desk and the sideboard, - whether in like manner we recognize ourselves by observing the same stock of powers and memories one minute which we observed the last (with the addition, of course, of the intervening experi- nothing, that is, more completely devoid ences), or whether, on the contrary, selfconsciousness is not something wholly distinct from those "notes" of us by which other persons know us, from our modes of viewing things, our tricks of thought and manner, our stock of information, our prac-pletely learned without the help of reflectical talents, in a word, from any and all the items of any psychological and moral inventory that either we ourselves could construct or any one else could construct for us. Now, let us look at the curious cases of altered or dual memory with which we have been supplied, and see how far they shed any light on the question we have suggested. It would seem that the remarkable cases of lapses of memory are of two kinds, one kind being akin to what the medical profession now call aphasia, where there is no sort of self-oblivion at all, the psychological peculiarity, indeed, of which is that the mind, though it may be perfectly hits on the wrong words by which to express itself without being aware that it has done so, and yet the network of association being still but little impaired - often on very remarkable metaphorical expressions for the words really wanted. Thus we remember an old geologist suffering from aphasia, asking his son concerning the writer and his wife," whether he had ever seen these two specimens before," his scientific understanding evidently classing men specimens" of a species in natural history. We suspect that the cause of this kind of loss of memory, expressed of course psychologically and not physiologically, is that there has been too weak a hold of self-consciousness on the ordinary forms of language, and that memory, remaining strongest in those departments where the self-conscious action of the mind has been strongest, loses its grasp of all words learned by rote as it were, and without reflective analysis, though retaining its hold on those which have run the gauntlet of analysis and reflection. We suspect that the same account may be given of the first of the two cases mentioned by our correspondent, B. K. R." in another column, where, after an attack of paralysis, the patient, though completely recovering her memory of all her previous life and knowledge, yet completely lost her power of recognizing the printed and written alphabet as mere 66 46 But the second case mentioned by our correspondent " B. K. R." is far more curious, and, to our minds, far more instructive in relation to the rationale of such losses of memory. It is, as we understand it, the case of a lady with what we may call a forked memory, -i.e., two distinct states of memory, each of them grafted on to a common stock dating more than a year previously, but growing separately since that time. This, we say, is the construction we put on " B. K. R.'s" account of the Norman lady's case; though she describes it as two quite distinct and alternating states of memory, "but linked together by recognition of the same persons and objects." She tells us indeed that each memory, both the "normal" and the " abnormal," went back straight to the last moment when it was in which she then was, but not those con interrupted by the transition to the other nected only with the other aspect of herself. state. But this seems to us to imply that The tie in each case was her self-consciousboth went back to the time before the frac- ness. When she found the wayward, comture took place. If she recognized her hus- paratively unself-conscious, childlike self band, and servants, and house, and furni- uppermost, she recollected the husband, ture, and remembered how to sew and sing, and the priest, and the servants, and the &c., in the "abnormal" state, as she did, events associated with that aspect of herself. she clearly had a good stock of experience When she found the timid, self-restrained, at her service, gathered from the time be- anxious woman uppermost, she remembered fore her disease began. She could not the husband, and the priest, and the servants, have known her husband without remem- and the events associated with that side of bering her marriage, nor her songs, prob- herself. But did not both these phases beably, without remembering something of long to her true old self? and was it not, as the time when she learned them, and so it were, the double refraction, or breaking forth. Even though she required, as we of herself into two distinct states, in the one understand, to be made doubly acquainted of which the childlike, wayward side of her with any recent event, her husband's jour- had almost utterly disappeared, and in ney and return, for instance, once in the other of which the reflective, anxious, her normal and once in her abnormal deliberative side of her had almost utterly state, before she could recognize the disappeared, which caused this dualism in fact in both states, still had she forgot- her memory? All memory really conten, in her abnormal state, all she had sists in restoring, from a fragment of a learned before this morbid condition began, past state of consciousness, the whole of there would not have been the means of that past state of consciousness. But if making her au fait of the general facts the uniting link, — the self, known to us around her in her abnormal state at all. at one moment is essentially different in asWe infer, then, that we may assume that pect from the self known to us at another though the normal and abnormal memories moment, none of the objective facts to be alternated, each succeeding and excluding remembered, even though they were the the other, after the dualism had once be- same, could seem the same. It is then the gun, yet each of them drew upon the com- split, the cleavage, in self-knowledge which mon stock which preceded the first occur in this case causes the dualism of memory. rence of the abnormal state. To suppose that what our correspondent calls the abnormal' memory led back to a mere blank as regards the time preceding her first seizure, would be inconsistent with supposing that she knew her husband and the priest, and felt her usual reverence for both, and could sing her old songs, and so forth. We suspect that both states were really abnormal, although only one of them seemed to change the lady's character and to impress upon it a more childish and less self-conscious aspect, that there had been, when she was first seized, some virtual untwisting of the thread of her life, one of the untwisted fibres connecting it with the condition in which she seemed most like herself, and another with the trance-like condition described by our correspondent in which she lost her usual self-conscious timidity, her consideration for others (excepting her husband and the priest), and became wayward and wilful. But whether this conjecture be correct or not, nothing can show more clearly how much memory of external events depends upon the power to find the same self within. This Norman lady could remember in each condition the events associated with that state of her own mind The third case we have been referred to is contained in a very curious tract by Mr. Robert Dunn (M.R.C.S.) published in a Lancet of 1845, and reprinted from it in a small tract, in the same year. It is the story of a young woman who, at the time in ill-health, fell into a river and was nearly drowned. She was rescued and brought to her senses again, and for some day's was quite herself, though very ill; but in about ten days she fell into a fit, and when she recovered from this fit, she was found to have lost her sense of hearing, her sense of taste, and her power of articulation, and to have totally lost all memory of persons and things about her, though she retained very keenly her power of vision and her sense of touch. When she returned home she recognized no one and nothing, not even her mother, and for a long time she utterly forgot from day to day what she had been doing the previous day, so that her memory even in this abnormal state was not continuous. The curious thing was that her love of wild flowers, and her love of her mother, soon showed themselves again, aud that the first return of articulation was in an attempt to ask the cause of her mother's grief when she saw the latter in trouble many months | The lady who forgot how to read and after she herself had fallen into this state; write while remembering everything else and next, in naming the wild flowers she distinctly, never lost her self-recollection saw when taken into the country. Latterly at all. she was unhappy if the man to whom she had Dr. W. B. Carpenter, who read a very been formerly engaged were not near her, remarkable paper a few months ago before and eventually it was apparently jealousy the Royal Institution, on "The Unconat seeing him paying attention to another scious Activity of the Brain," suggests, we which threw her, about a year after her think, in part a key to the problem. He seizure, into a second fit, from which she points out that operations performed autorecovered in her right mind, but without matically, and without training, by many the slightest memory of the intervening of the lower animals, have to be learned by year. She recovered her old memory of man; but when learned can be performed persons and things, spoke as usual, and without any self-consciousness, and therebefore long recovered her hearing too, fore, of course, without any recollection. which was the last link in her recovery." Thus a man in a state of profound abOne marked feature in this case is the evi-straction walks through a crowded street dent flickering of a half-memory beneath without jostling his fellow-passengers or her blank forgetfulness, as in her restless- bruising himself against lamp-posts; and he ness, when her mother, and subsequently follows the line of direction which is most her former lover, were not near her. She familiar to him, even though at starting he recovered too, her former skill in sewing, had intended to take some other." And we she had been a dressmaker, before she may add, of course, he can remember nocould possibly have relearned the art, and thing of what he has done, for he has done as we have seen, named wild flowers it without self-consciousness, which is essenrightly, and used many words quite rightly, tial to memory, -memory being nothing before she came to herself at all. But the but the complete recovery of a former state distinctive feature of her condition was the of consciousness involving both the self and remarkable loss of self-consciousness which the not-self. Now, as in one of the above was so much the feature of her case, that cases the only thing forgotten was those during the first few months after her seiz- arbitrary associations between sounds and ure she would fall spontaneously into utter forms in which self-consciousness is least of unconsciousness several times in the day. all called out, so in all the others what seems to have been forgotten was not so much the objects of thought as the connecting subject, the self which united them. The mere artistic dexterities were often recovered, just as a man might exercise them in a fit of abstraction or in his sleep, without the recovery of this self-recollection. What the Norman lady forgot in her "abnormal" state was her brooding self; what she forgot in her "normal state was her spontaneous, childlike, unreflecting self; and as her husband, and priest, and household duties belonged to both selfs, she recognized them in both states, but under so different a light that they did not link into the same memory. Mr. Dunn's patient forgot herself altogether, like the young German in New Orleans, and did not recollect herself till after the second fit, though many of her "unconscious" mental energies returned long before it. These people, in their oblivious condition, were all acting like the man who threads his way to the city without attending to it, except that instead of being abstracted through the excess of musing reverie, a blank mist seems to have fallen over their self-knowledge, which made all the scenery of the background dim. The Norman lady alone What we desire to note most is this, that as she gradually recovered her former power, she does not seem in any degree to have gradually recovered her self-recolection. On the contrary, she regained that per saltum after the second fit, and not in any degree by recognizing what we may call the old furniture of her mind, as she gradually regained it. And the same point is noticeable in all other cases of this kind. Thus the Norman lady, though most of her objects of interest were common to the two states, was not thereby helped to any moral continuity between the one state of mind and the other. She also passed per saltum from the self-recollection of what our correspondent calls her normal state to the self-recollection of her abnormal state, and was not helped even by the mass of common memories which must have belonged to both since in both she recognized the authority of her husband and her father confessor over her, to connect the two. Indeed, it is the characteristic of all the cases of discontinuous memory we have heard of, that though there may be a gradual recovery of words and faculties, yet wherever the self-recognition has failed, it returns either per saltum, or not at all. got a glimpse of herself, but of two different sides of herself in her different phases. Yet in all cases alike the act of self-recognition was sudden, and not gradual, as if to make it clear that though we are liable to lose our self-recognition, no less than our power of recognizing external objects, yet that this self-recognition does not depend upon an accumulation of individual memories of our features of character, but is a distinct intuition, and this not the less that the fully conscious self may be so different from the child-like unconscious self, that it is possible to recognize each self separately without connecting the two indivisibly together. From The Athenæum. 66 and reading, it may appear edifying, and we can only hope it will be seen by no others. Well may he say, 'I could not but observe how different do I appear on paper from what I know myself to be." With still deeper feeling would he repeat this sentiment if he could first read the volume now published. Innumerable complaints of the lack of resignation, of high piety and spiritual vigor, are, as might be expected, to be found in the extracts from his diary; and, of course, the credit of all this backwardness is given to the Devil. Once, indeed, we find a grain of counter-balancing sense: "I know," says Mr. Newton, "the reason of this want of spiritual life · Perimus licitis. The Devil attacks some by storm, with violent temptations within or without; but he lays against me, as it were by sap, in a more secret way, but not less dangerous, by beguiling my affections. But why do I say the Devil? Alas! my own heart is weak and wicked enough to ruin me. sets my This it is that idols against the Lord, and brings me under the power of lawful things." IN the Preface we are informed that the materials for this volume "include a diary unknown to previous biographers, covering a period of fifty-seven years, and a very large correspondence, together with other The doctrine of a Special Providence is documents of great value and interest, the frequently introduced, and presumed to be greater part of which have never yet been strongly illustrated by certain events in Mr. published." If, therefore, any interesting Newton's life. How this important doctrine particulars could be extracted from the diary may be misapplied even by educated men of so good a man as John Newton, and if has been seldom shown more plainly than in they could be strikingly disposed and dis-one instance, which we give in the editor's played by so good a man as Mr. Josiah Bull, words. Referring to the early period of Mr. we might fairly have expected an instructive Newton's career, before he became a clerand attractive publication. With all broth-gyman, and was merely a tide-surveyor at erly kindness, however, it must be admitted Liverpool, Mr. Bull observes, with reference that the diary is commonplace, the incidents ordinary, the narrative dull, the style tame, if there be any style at all, and that the got this better situation is but another of goodness of both the diarist and the editor the singular illustrations of providential inis so unruffled and so continuous that one terposition of which his life is so full. It is wickedly tempted to wish that both these was supposed, though without any sufficient excellent gentlemen would occasionally reground, that Mr. Newton's immediate precord a few venial sins, for the sake of vari-decessor in office intended to resign his ety, and to assure us that we are really situation. This led Mr. Manesty to apply reading about men of like passions with to the Member for the town for it on his ourselves. to some promotion obtained by Newton,— "And how it came about that Mr. Newton friend's behalf. The request was at once other mistake, I missed the land-waiter's | himself in an extraordinary manner, hoping place, which was my first object." Now on this passage some objections may fairly be raised; and let it be noticed that it is not John Newton, but Mr. Bull, who styles this event "another of the many singular illustrations of providential interposition of which his (Newton's) life is so full." Looked at in the light of common sense, how can it be said that this was a providential interposition on Mr. Newton's behalf without a gross and irreverent reflection on the great Disposer of all things? Here we have five persons, all, of course, under the same Providence. Let us call Mr. Manesty A, Mr. Newton B, the dying officer C, the mayor D, and his nephew E. Of these five persons the problem is to show how one, B, was strikingly interposed for; and the proposed solution is this: A. exerts himself for B, and secures for him an office which is not really vacant, because C. fills it; but to make B. a beneficiary in fact, Providence intervenes, and removes C. suddenly — that is, Providence sends death to C. But D. and E. are both under Providence, and yet get nothing at all, though they are alert enough in their use of means. Thus, then, Providence, which really does nothing for D. and E, does everything for A. and B, who don't appear in the least degree more meritorious than D. and E! Remember that Newton was not at this time a devoted clergyman, but a mere civil servant, and he was only promoted to another place in the civil service. Even a Pagan poet would justly warn Mr. Bull against his absurd presumption in the well-known but too oft forgotten admonition -- 66 that the great Disposer of events would give him a prize in the lottery! Strange as this may seem, it is actually recorded in his Diary, thus:- Tuesday, May 4th.-Determined this day to have a ticket in the ensuing lottery; not, I hope, with a desire of amassing money merely, but, if it should be so, of increasing my capacity for usefulness." Thereanent, inthe month of December following, Mr. Newton writes" Informed by post that my lottery-ticket is a blank. I am content. I should hardly have engaged that way if I had not supposed that my vow and my desire of usefulness therein gave a kind of sanction thereto. And I think if the Lord had given me a prize, it would have been chiefly acceptable as a means of helping the poor, and forwarding the cause of the Gospel in these parts." This reminds us of the announcement at Baden, that the gambling saloon will be opened later on Sundays, to suit the arrangements for divine service! The phraseology of the Diary, and indeed of the volume throughout, is of that particular, kind which is so well known in the biographies and diaries of good men of very limited intelligence and very narrow views as regards the great world around them. For instance, Mr. Newton thus characterizes Yorkshire: -"I have lately been a journey into Yorkshire. That is a flourishing county indeed; like Eden, the garden of the Lord, watered on every side by the streams of the Gospel. There the voice of the turtle is heard in all quarters, and multitudes rejoice in the light." This description does not exactly correspond with our recollections of Yorkshire, nor, if we may Nec Deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus. believe the Report of the Commissioners And where is the "dignus vindice nodus" on the Pollution of Rivers, can Yorkshire in Mr. Newton's Custom-House promotion? be said to be like Eden, the garden of But worse is yet to come. In order to the Lord, watered on every side by pure promote B, poor C. must be taken, without streams. But of course Mr. Newton speaks warning, to another world; and this accord- of it figuratively and spiritually, though even ingly immediately happened, if we believe in figure it does not exclusively resound Mr. Bull, by a "providential intervention." with the voice of the turtle. Others, and This is his own clear interpretation of the some very black and harsh birds, have their sudden death of C, if he means anything at turn and their croak in Yorkshire. all by his phraseology. So, then, two presumably worthy men are defeated, and one presumably worthy man is suddenly removed by death, to secure the civil promotion of a man not presumably worthier than any one of the before-mentioned three! Can anything be more calculated to bring discredit on a great religious doctrine than this "singular illustration" of it? We are glad that John Newton himself does not call this 66 a providential intervention." Yet even the pious Newton can delude The only generally interesting portions of the Diary are those which afford us glimpses of Newton's contemporaries Whitefield the great preacher, Cowper the sweet poet, and Thornton the liberal layman. The last allowed Newton 2007. per annum that he might be hospitable to all the brethren; and Newton records that he must have received from Thornton in all about 3,0007. Oh, that there were more Thorntons! Newton was hospitable to poor Cowper during his mental malady. So long 3 the poet |