Illusions by James Sully (story reading txt) 📕

Thus far as to the general or essential characteristics of memory on its mental and its bodily side. But what we commonly mean by memory is, on its psychical side at least, much more than this. We do not say that we properly recollect a thing unless we are able to refer it to some more or less clearly defined region of the past, and to localize it in the succession of experiences making up our mental image of the past. In other words, though we may speak of an imperfect kind of recollection where this definite reference is wanting, we mean by a perfect form of memory something which includes this reference.

Without entering just now upon a full analysis of what this reference to a particular region of the past means, I may observe that it takes place by help of an habitual retracing of the past, or certain portions of it, that is to say, a regressive movement of the imagination along the lines of our actual experience. Setting out from the present moment, I can move regressively to the preceding state of consciousness, to the penultimate, and so on. The fact that each distinct mental state is continuous with the preceding and the succeeding, and in a certain sense overlaps these, makes any portion of our experience essentially a succession of states of consciousness, involving some rudimentary idea of time. And thus, whether I anticipate a future event or recall a past one, my imagination, setting out from the present moment, constructs a sequence of experiences of which the one particularly dwelt on is the other term or boundary. And our idea of the position of this last in time, like that of an object in space, is one of a relation to our present position, and is determined by the length of the sequence of experiences thus run over by the imagination.[115] It may be added that since the imagination can much more easily follow the actual order of experience than conceive it as reversed, the retrospective act of memory naturally tends to complete itself by a return movement forwards from the remembered event to the present moment.

In practice this detailed retracing of successive moments of mental life is confined to very recent experiences. If I try to localize in time a remote event, I am content with placing it in relation to a series of prominent events or landmarks which serves me as a rough scheme of the past. The formation of such a mnemonic framework is largely due to the needs of social converse, which proceeds by help of a common standard of reference. This standard is supplied by those objective, that is to say, commonly experienced regularities of succession which constitute the natural and artificial divisions of the years, seasons, months, weeks, etc. The habit of recurring to these fixed divisional points of the past renders a return of imagination to any one of them more and more easy. A man has a definite idea of "a year ago" which the child wants, just because he has had so frequently to execute that vague regressive movement by which the idea arises. And though, as our actual point in time moves forward, the relative position of any given landmark is continually changing, the change easily adapts itself to that scheme of time-divisions which holds good for any present point.

Few of our recollections of remote events involve a definite reference to this system of landmarks. The recollections of early life are, in the case of most people, so far as they depend on individual memory, very vaguely and imperfectly localized. And many recent experiences which are said to be half forgotten, are not referred to any clearly assignable position in time. One may say that in average cases definite localization characterizes only such supremely interesting personal experiences as spontaneously recur again and again to the mind. For the rest it is confined to those facts and events of general interest to which our social habits lead us repeatedly to go back.[116]

The consciousness of personal identity is said to be bound up with memory. That is to say, I am conscious of a continuous permanent self under all the varying surface-play of the stream of consciousness, just because I can, by an act of recollection, bring together any two portions of this stream of experience, and so recognize the unbroken continuity of the whole. If this is so, it would seem to follow from the very fragmentary character of our recollections that our sense of identity is very incomplete. As we shall see presently, there is good reason to look upon, this consciousness of continuous personal existence as resting only in part on memory, and mainly on our independently formed representation of what has happened in the numberless and often huge lacunæ of the past left by memory.

Having thus a rough idea of the mechanism of memory to guide us, we may be able to investigate the illusions incident to the process.

Illusions of Memory.

By an illusion of memory we are to understand a false recollection or a wrong reference of an idea to some region of the past. It might, perhaps, be roughly described as a wrong interpretation of a special kind of mental image, namely, what I have called a mnemonic image.

Mnemonic illusion is thus distinct from mere forgetfulness or imperfect memory. To forget or be doubtful about a past event is one thing; to seem to ourselves to remember it when we afterwards find that the fact was otherwise than we represented it in the apparent act of recollection is another thing. Indistinctness of recollection, or the decay of memory, is, as we shall soon see, an important co-operant condition of mnemonic illusion, but does not constitute it, any more than haziness of vision or disease of the visual organ, though highly favourable to optical illusion, can be said to constitute it.

We may conveniently proceed in our detailed examination of illusions of memory, by distinguishing between three facts which appear to be involved in every complete and accurate process of recollection. When I distinctly recall an event, I am immediately sure of three things: (1) that something did really happen to me; (2) that it happened in the way I now think; and (3) that it happened when it appears to have happened. I cannot be said to recall a past event unless I feel sure on each of these points. Thus, to be able to say that an event happened at a particular date, and yet unable to describe how it happened, means that I have a very incomplete recollection. The same is true when I can recall an event pretty distinctly, but fail to assign it its proper date. This being so, it follows that there are three possible openings, and only three, by which errors of memory may creep in. And, as a matter of fact, each of these openings will be found to let in one class of mnemonic illusion. Thus we have (1) false recollections, to which there correspond no real events of personal history; (2) others which misrepresent the manner of happening of the events; and (3) others which falsify the date of the events remembered.

It is obvious, from a mere glance at this threefold classification, that illusions of memory closely correspond to visual illusions. Thus, class (1) may be likened to the optical illusions known as subjective sensations of light, or ocular spectra. Here we can prove that there is nothing actually seen in the field of vision, and that the semblance of a visible object arises from quite another source than that of ordinary external light-stimulation, and by what may be called an accident. Similarly, in the case of the first class of mnemonic illusions, we shall find that there is nothing actually recollected, but that the mnemonic spectra or phantoms of recollected objects can be accounted for in quite another way. Such illusions come nearest to hallucinations in the region of memory.

Again, class (2) has its visual analogue in those optical illusions which depend on effects of haziness and of the action of refracting media interposed between the eye and the object; in which cases, though there is some real thing corresponding to the perception, this is seen in a highly defective, distorted, and misleading form. In like manner, we can say that the images of memory often get obscured, distorted, and otherwise altered when they have receded into the dim distance, and are looked back upon through a long space of intervening mental experience. Finally, class (3) has its visual counterpart in erroneous perceptions of distance, as when, for example, owing to the clearness of the mountain atmosphere and the absence of intervening objects, the side of the Jungfrau looks to the inexperienced tourist at Wengernalp hardly further than a stone's throw. It will be found that when our memory falsifies the date of an event, the error arises much in the same way as a visual miscalculation of distance.

This threefold division of illusions of memory is plainly a rather superficial one, and not based on distinctions of psychological nature or origin. In order to make our treatment of the subject scientific as well as popular, it will be necessary to introduce the distinction between the passive and the active factor under each head. It will be found, I think, without forcing the analogy too far, that here, as in the case of the illusions of perception and introspection, error is attributable now to misleading suggestion on the part of the mental content of the moment, now to a process of incorporating into this content a mental image not suggested by it, but existing independently.

If we are to proceed as we did in the case of the illusions of sense, and take up the lower stages of error first of all, we shall need to begin with the third class of errors, those of localization in time, or of what may be called mnemonic perspective. It has been already observed that the definite localization of a mnemonic image is only an occasional accompaniment of what is loosely called recollection. Hence, error as to the position of an event in the past chain of events would seem to involve the least degree of violation of the confidence which we are wont to repose in memory. After this, we may proceed to the discussion of the second class, which I may call distortions of the mnemonic picture. And, finally, we may deal with the most signal and palpable variety of error of memory, namely, the illusions which I have called mnemonic spectra.

Illusions of Perspective: A. Definite Localization.

In order to understand these errors of mnemonic perspective, we shall have to inquire more closely than we have yet done into the circumstances which customarily determine our idea of the degree of propinquity or of remoteness of a past event. And first of all, we will take the case of a complete act of recollection when the mind is able to travel back along an uninterrupted series of experiences to a definitely apprehended point. Here there would seem, at first sight, to be no room for error, since this movement of retrospective imagination may be said to involve a direct measurement of the distance, just as a sweep of the eye over the ground between a spectator and an object affords a direct measurement of the intervening space.

Modern science, however, tells us