I.
FRANCE.
Dr. Paul Sollier has just published, in the Bibliothéque Charcot-Debove,[46] a new and excellent work, _Les troubles de la memoire_. This work is not identical in its purpose with that of M. Ribot; it corrects the latter in certain points, completes and corroborates it in others. M. Sollier set out to discuss this question solely from a medical standpoint, which was intentionally passed over by M. Ribot, but he has also necessarily touched upon its psychological aspects, and, as he informs us himself, he was obliged on the whole to make a medico-psychological study of the question.
The subject is a vast one; one could include in it aphasia and all the weaknesses resulting from the destruction of the brain-centres, whether those of motion or of sensation. M. Sollier has taken the pains to reduce it, however, to definite limits. He studies especially the subject of acquired amnesia (diminutive changes and disaggregations of the memory). He does not consider the subject of congenital amnesia, which is an absence and not a loss of memory. Strictly considered, the only cases of true amnesia, or _organic_ amnesia, are those which result from the destruction of the nerve-centres, since in this case there is an absolute loss of the power of forming mental images, and not simply an enfeebling or forgetting of them, which is characteristic of _functional_ amnesia. From a clinical standpoint amnesia exists only in the last case. Though the effect may be the same in both cases, the causes are not identical.
Clinical investigation cannot, however, overlook the diminutive changes which take place in the memory and which, as early as 1817, were called by Louyer-Villermay dysmnesia, and which are always closely allied to organic modifications of the brain. As regards amnesia itself, it is important to distinguish simple amnesia from retrogressive and progressive amnesia. M. Sollier explains the motive causes of these different conditions with great lucidity, and renders them easy of comprehension by means of ingenious illustrations.
I call attention to the information he gives us as to the conditions under which a revival of mental images takes place, p. 30; to his criticism of Ribot’s opinion, according to which the power of correctly locating events in the scale of time is the true characteristic of psychical memory: it is quite enough if it reproduces events as in the past, that is to say if there exists a conscious knowledge which shows that the mental conception belongs to the past, or is, simply, a remembrance, p. 35 and 40; to his remarks on the strengthening of mental images due to the repetition of remembrances, the necessary sequence of which is that a weakening of old memories follows the destruction of accumulated mental images, p. 48; to his explanation of the processes of retrogressive amnesia (coming suddenly after an attack of vertigo, a blow, etc.) which he bases upon a supposition of a group of mental conceptions in touch with one another, in such a way that the loss of one leading conception in a group deprives this group of sufficient consistency to form a conscious synthesis, p. 70.
As regards the classifications of amnesia M. Sollier censures that of M. Ribot as being neither openly psychological nor openly clinical, and of taking successively as bases the extent of an observed phenomenon, its evolution, its location in time. Moreover, from a clinical standpoint it has led to a joining together of totally incongruous disorders. M. Sollier therefore rejects it, and contents himself with adopting first of all, with M. Falret, the natural classification of general amnesia and of partial amnesia. Moreover, in taking account of the systematising of lost remembrances, he proposes to make a distinction as to the two varieties of systematised (functional) and of non-systematised (organic) amnesia, considered from the purely psychological standpoint, p. 59. We should thus have, firstly, the classification of general amnesia, including (A) true organic amnesia (destruction of the centre of mental images), and, under the classification of the systematised, (B) functional, or apparent, amnesia (imperfect performance of the functions of the centres): this latter subdividing into two groups, (_a_) amnesia with its varieties (_a´_) simple, (_b´_) retrogressive, (_c´_) progressive, and (_b_) paramnesia: (_a´_) that of locality, (_b´_) that of exactness; to which it is proper to add (_c_) dysmnesia, which is organic-functional. Secondly, the classification of partial amnesia whether systematised or not, which may be either organic or functional. M. Sollier abandons, moreover, every pathological or etiological classification as being exceedingly unsatisfactory. In the presence of a patient, he justly remarks, the physician can only employ semiology.—I will not enter here into the details of the inquisitor-like investigation entered upon by the author. I must even proceed without stopping through the observations intended for medical men, which form the second part of the work, but I judge that every reader will also find therein many facts which may prove of interest. After having read it, one is more impressed than ever with the importance and delicacy of the motive forces of the memory, in noting the frequency and the varieties even of its sources of weakness. M. Sollier has the credit of pointing them out—in the shape of “defects in synthetical power” and in “will power”—in the sources of weakness where one had not been accustomed to look for them. It would be interesting, he thinks, to find out what part amnesia may perhaps take in the pathogeny of certain nervous disorders, and the influence which it has on their evolution. Specialists for the insane might find therein a new subject of study, and psychology will profit, on the other hand, by that which clinical experience offers it. Is not its main object to learn to understand life as a unit at the same time that it analyses it as a diversity?
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When one passes from a book like that of M. Sollier to the work of M. l’Abbé MAURICE DE BAETS, _Les bases de la morale et du droit_,[47] one is impressed by the change of method. It has become impossible for us to consider pathology as unallied to questions of morality; and we have accomplished this great object of studying matters pertaining to the moral world, the evolution of law, without seeking our base of support in a religious faith or in a metaphysical affirmation. Even M. l’Abbé de Baets himself declares emphatically that he desires to adopt only one starting point from among those we are acquainted with,—the verification of facts,—and truly he shows a good will and knowledge; nevertheless the ground which he considers so firm has, as we believe, no stability. All seems strange to us, if I may so speak, in books of this description. The tone which is peculiar to them, the nature of the facts cited, the progress of the reasoning, impeach them just as surely as the blue color of his costume reveals afar off an inhabitant of the Celestial Empire. I am not an impassioned adversary of the clergy; far from it. I appreciate their intentions and esteem their persons as one should, but I am unable to share their opinions, and I consider indeed that they deceive themselves when they think that faith has ever given to the world an absolute assurance. It has not given it because it has not proved sufficient. Mankind, variable and vacillating though it may be, does not change its beliefs because of fickleness of heart: its mental evolution takes place too slowly for that, and is also too painful. The Catholic church of to-day has adopted as its watch-word the return to St. Thomas of Aquinas; it will gain by this unity of effort, without succeeding however in leading back the minds of men to its point of view. The diverse ways we follow tend doubtless as a matter of fact toward the same objective point, and run more or less in the same direction; but humanity scarcely ever passes back again over the paths which it has once traversed.
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We have another little volume by M. LOMBROSO, _Les applications de l’anthropologie criminelle_; a sequel to _Nouvelles recherches_, which I have mentioned before. We find here interesting pages in regard to transportation and reform schools, and a criticism of the new theories of the penal code (Garofalo, Tarde, Sighele, Onanoff and Blorg, Ferri)—a part of the question considered in the Congress. A chapter indeed is devoted to the subject of criminal anthropology in modern literature, in regard to which it seems to me M. Lombroso always makes more of a question than is desirable, but which he well understands how to criticise. Then follow several pages on the criminal type in art, after a work of Dr. Edward Lefort; then comes a description of anthropological instruments and methods. I will not affirm that this last work brings us much of novelty; it is chiefly a new and energetic presentation of his views, and M. Lombroso has no doubt whatever that by dint of striking the nail upon the head he will succeed in driving it into the wall of his adversaries.
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The work of M. B. BOURDON, _L’expression des emotions et des tendances dans le langage_, is certainly one of the most curious books one can read. He treats in an original manner of phonetical questions, which are less rife in France than in England and Germany, as to what sounds signify, or speech; what is their worth in intensity, elevation, form or quality, duration; what phenomena are shown by successions of intensity, of elevation, of elementary articulation, of syllables, of words, etc., of duration; what are the relations of these phenomena to versification and what comparison one can make between writing and speech: such are the problems particularly studied, at times with the aid of very simple but instructive facts culled from experience.
These studies—I need scarcely add that they are comparative ones—are of interest for various reasons. They lead up to new ideas of grammar and of language, and furnish arguments for a reform in orthography of which M. Bourdon is a very warm partisan. His readers will not be slow to notice for the matter of that, that he is in regard to this frankly revolutionary; and it may seem paradoxical to say to them, for example, that “the distinction between analytical and synthetical languages is absolutely artificial, and could only be produced through our bad systems of writing.” Writing, M. Bourdon indeed remarks, introduces separations in places where spoken language makes no pause. The English write _I will go_, they pronounce it _Iwillgo_. The analysis which pertains to writing masks the true cohesion of the spoken language, and “if in the past all series of articulations had been written as a single word which were in fact pronounced as a single word, we should not have known the error which consists in opposing certain languages classed as synthetical to others which we class as analytical.” The argument is perhaps not a decisive one, and in the neo-Latin languages, for example, one can scarcely deny that the analysis of the written language has conformed to the work of decomposition of the antique forms, so as to adapt itself to the new groupings of their essential elements, groupings wherein these elements remain variable because speech separates them effectively, in many cases by interpolating governing words or others.
But it is not my intention to enter into these detailed discussions. I leave M. Bourdon in further calling attention to his last chapter, _Ecriture_. Persons curious as to graphology will find in it some good ideas concerning this method of “character reading.” The author does not tell everything, and I have a suspicion that he greatly despises certain signs valued by the graphologists, and arrived at empirically, but we should note what he has actually said.
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Under the title, _Le monde physique, Essai de conception expérimentale_, M. Dr. JULIEN PIOGER offers to the public a sketch of a world-system. This system is summed up in the expression of “Universal Solidarity,” and is based on the idea of infinitely minute matter-particles, or “infinitesimals,” the mutual relations of which, and their equilibrium, constitute the machinery of the universe. The atomic-mechanical hypothesis, says M. Pioger, is wrong in resolving matter into perfected differential particles and in assigning to its atoms qualities which make of them either true material corpuscules or a real entity, “a thing in itself.” On the contrary, far from intending to assign a limit to materiality, the hypothesis of infinitesimals confines itself to limiting the conception which we may have of it. The infinitesimal corresponds to the infinitely small, that is to say to the non-perfected, to the non-differentiable, beyond our cognisance and our perceptivity; it expresses the most reduced condition of the affinities which constitute matter; it is the expression of the infinitesimal existence of that which we call motion, extension, ponderability, under the general name of matter. Now the most simple thing which can be conceived of in the physical world, is the _couple_ formed by the essential equipoise of two infinitesimals. In developing the couple it becomes possible to form the universe in all its great variety. The solidarity of the parts in the whole appears as the essential condition of existence of all that which Is—the necessary condition of all individuality.
In conclusion I call attention to two new editions, one the well-known work of M. BERNARD PÉREZ, _Les trois premières années de l’enfant_, fifth edition, revised and supplied with an introduction by Mr. James Sully; the other _Les functions du cerveau_, by M. JULES SOURY, a work highly esteemed, embodying the most recent researches.
LUCIEN ARRÉAT.
FOOTNOTES:
[46] Rueff, publisher.
[47] This book and the following ones are published by F. Alcan.