The difficulty would be insuperable if we really had only auditory impressions on the one hand, and auditory memories on the other. Not so however, if auditory impressions organize nascent movements, capable of scanning the phrase which is heard and of emphasizing its main articulations. These automatic movements of internal accom paniment, at first undecided or uncoordinated, might become more precise by repetition; they would end by sketching a simplified figure in which the listener would find, in their main lines and principal directions, the very movements of the speaker. Thus would unfold itself in con sciousness, under the form of nascent muscular sensations, the motor diagram, as it were, of the speech we hear. To adapt our hearing to a new language would then consist, at the outset, neither in modifying the crude sound nor in sup plementing the sounds with memories; it would be to coordinate the motor tendencies of the mus cular apparatus of the voice to the impressions of the ear; it would be to perfect the motor accom paniment.
In learning a physical exercise, we begin by CHAP. H RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS 137 imitating the movement as a whole, as our eyes see it from without, as we think we have seen it done. Our perception of it is confused; confused therefore will be the movement whereby we try to repeat it. But whereas our visual perception was of a continuous whole, the movement by which we endeavour to reconstruct the image is compound and made up of a multitude of muscular contrac tions and tensions; and our consciousness of these itself includes a number of sensations resulting from the varied play of the articulations. The confused movement which copies the image is, then, already its virtual decomposition; it bears within itself, so to speak, its own analysis. The progress which is brought about by repetition and practice consists merely in unfolding what was previously wrapped up, in bestowing on each of the elementary movements that autonomy which ensures precision, without, however, breaking up that solidarity with the others without which it would become useless. We are right when we say that habit is formed by the repetition of an effort; but what would be the use of repeating it, if the result were always to reproduce the same thing? The true effect of repetition is to decom pose, and then to recompose, and thus appeal to the intelligence of the body. At each new attempt it separates movements which were interpenetrat ing; each time it calls the attention of the body to a new detail which had passed unperceived; it bids the body discriminate and classify; it 138 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP. 11 teaches what is the essential; it points out, one after another, within the total movement, the lines that mark off its internal structure. In this sense, a movement is learnt when the body has been made to understand it.
So a motor accompaniment of speech may well break the continuity of the mass of sound. But we But this have now to point out in what this Smpanfment accompaniment consists. Is it speech °peechr!Ldi- itself, repeated internally? If this were Sts'slS so» *ne child would be able to repeat all outlines. the words that its ear can distinguish; and we ourselves should only need to understand a foreign language to be able to pronounce it with a correct accent. The matter is far from being so simple. I may be able to catch a tune, to follow its phrasing, even to fix it in memory, without being able to sing it. I can easily dis tinguish the peculiarities of inflexion and tone in an Englishman speaking German — I correct him therefore, mentally; — but it by no means follows that I could give the right inflexion and tone to the German phrase, if I were to utter it. Here, moreover, the observation of every-day life is confirmed by clinical facts. It is still possible to follow and understand speech when one has be come incapable of speaking. Motor aphasia does not involve word deafness.
This is because the diagram, by means of which we divide up the speech we hear, indicates only its salient outlines. It is to speech itself what CHA*. 11 RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS 139 the rough sketch is to the finished picture. For it is one thing to understand a difficult movement, another to be able to carry it out. To under stand it, we need only to realize in it what is essential, just enough to distinguish it from all other possible movements. But to be able to carry it out, we must besides have brought our body to understand it. Now, the logic of the body admits of no tacit implications. It demands that all the constituent parts of the required movement shall be set forth one by one, and then put together again. Here a complete analysis is necessary, in which no detail is neglected, and an actual synthesis, in which nothing is curtailed. The imagined diagram, composed of a few nascent muscular sensations, is but a sketch. The muscular sensations, really and completely experienced, give it colour and life.
It remains to be considered how an accom paniment of this kind can be produced, and Evidence whether it really is always produced. Ss'o?^ We know that in order effectively to aphasia, in pronounce a word the tongue and lips must articulate, the larynx must be brought into play for phonation, and affected. fae muscles of the chest must produce an expiratory movement of air. Thus, to every syllable uttered there corresponds the play of a number of mechanisms already prepared in the cerebral and bulbar centres. These mechanisms are joined to the higher centres of the cortex by I4O MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n the axis-cylinder processes of the pyramidal cells in the psycho-motor zone. Along this path the impulse of the will travels. So, when we desire to articulate this or that sound, we transmit the order to act to this or that group of motor me chanisms selected from among them all. But, while the ready-made mechanisms which corres pond to the various possible movements of articu lation and phonation are connected with the causes (whatever these may be) which set them to work in voluntary speech, there are facts which put beyond all doubt the linkage of these same mechan isms with the auditory perception of words. First of all, among the numerous varieties of aphasia de scribed in clinical reports, we know of two (Licht- heim's 4th and 6th forms) which appear to imply a relation of this kind. Thus, in a case observed by Lichtheim himself, the subject had lost, as the result of a fall, the memory of the articulation of words, and consequently the faculty of spon taneous speech; yet he repeated quite correctly what was said to him.1 On the other hand, in cases where spontaneous speech is unaffected, but where word deafness is absolute and the patient no longer understands what is said to him, the faculty of repeating another person's words may still be completely retained.8 It may be said, with Bastian, that these phenomena merely point to a fatigue of the articulatory or auditive 1 Lichtheim, On Aphasia (Brain, Jan. 1885, p. 447).
2 Ibid., p. 454.
CHAP, n RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS 14!
memory of words, the acoustic impressions only serving to awaken that memory from its torpor.1 We may have to allow for this hypothesis, but it does not appear to us to account for the curious phenomena of echolalia, long since pointed out by Romberg,2 Voisin8 and Forbes Winslow,4 which are termed by Kussmaul5 (probably with some exaggeration) acoustic reflexes. Here the subject repeats mechanically, and perhaps uncon sciously, the words he hears, as though the auditory sensations converted themselves automatically into movements of articulation. From these facts some have inferred that there is a special mechanism which unites a so-called acoustic cen tre of words with an articulatory centre of speech.6 The truth appears to lie between these two hypo theses. There is more in these various phenomena than absolutely mechanical actions, but less than an appeal to voluntary memory. They testify to a tendency of verbal auditory impressions to 1 Bastian, On Different Kinds of Aphasia (British Medical Journal, Oct. and Nov. 1887, p. 935).
a Romberg, Lehrbuch der Nervenkrankheiten, 1853, vol. ii.
8 Quoted by Bateman, On Aphasia. London, 1890, p. 79. — Cf. Marce", Memoire sur quelques observations de physiologic pathologique (Mem. de la Soc. de Biologie, 2nd series, vol. ii, p. 102).
4 Forbes Winslow, On Obscure Diseases of the Brain. London, 1861, p. 505.
6 Kussmaul, Die Storungen der Sprache, Leipzig. 1877, PP- 55 et seq.
' Arnaud, Contribution a V etude clinique de la surdite verbale (Arch, de neurologie, 1886, p. 192). — Spamer, Ueber Asymbolie (Arch. /. Psychiatrie, vol. vi, pp. 507 and 524).
142 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n prolong themselves in movements of articulation; a tendency which assuredly does not escape, as a rule, the control of the will, perhaps even im plies a rudimentary discrimination, and expresses itself, in the normal state, by an internal repe tition of the striking features of the words that are heard. Now our motor diagram is nothing else.
Considering this hypothesis more closely, we shall perhaps find in it the psychological explana tion, which we were just now seeking, of certain forms of word deafness. A few cases of word deafness are known where there was a com plete survival of acoustic memory. The patient had retained, unimpaired, both the auditive memory of words and the sense of hearing; yet he recognized no word that was said to him.1 A subcortical lesion is here supposed, which prevents the acoustic impressions from going to join the verbal auditory images in the cortical centres where they are supposed to be deposited. But, in the first place, the question is whether the brain can store up images. And, secondly, even if it were proved that there is some lesion in the paths that the acoustic impres sions have to follow, we should still be compelled to seek a psychological interpretation of the final 1 See, in particular: P. Serieux, Sur un cos de surdite verbale pure (Revue de Medecine, 1893, p. 733 et seq.); Licht- heim, loc. cit., p. 461; and Arnaud, Contrib. d I' etude de la surdite vcrbtde (2° article), Arch, de Neurologic, 1886, p. 366.
CHAP, ii RECOLLECTIONS AND MOVEMENTS 143 result. For, by hypothesis, the auditory memories can still be recalled to consciousness; by hypo thesis also, the auditory impressions still reach consciousness; there must therefore be in con sciousness itself a gap, a solution of continuity, something, whatever it is, which hinders the perception from joining the memories. Now, we may throw some light on the case if we remember that crude auditory perception is really that of a continuity of sound, and that the sensori-motor connexions established by habit must have as their office, in the normal state, to decompose this continuity. A lesion of these conscious mechan isms, by hindering the decomposition, might completely check the up-rush of memories which tend to alight upon the corresponding perceptions. Therefore the ' motor diagram ' might be what is injured by the lesion. If we pass in review the cases (which are, indeed, not very numerous) of word deafness where acoustic memories were retained, we notice certain details that are inter esting in this respect. Adler notes, as a remark able fact in word deafness, that the patients no longer react even to the loudest sounds, though their hearing has preserved all its acuteness.1 In other words, sound no longer finds in them its motor echo A patient of Charcot's, attacked by a passing word deafness, relates that he heard his clock strike, but that he could not count the 1 Adler, Beitrag zur Kenntniss der seltneren Formen von nensorischtr Aphasie (Neurol. Centralblatt, 1891, p. 296 et »eq.).
144 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n strokes.1 Probably he was unable to separate and distinguish them. Another patient declares that he perceives the words of a conversation, but as a confused noise.2 Lastly, the patient who has lost the understanding of the spoken word recovers it if the word is repeated to him several times, and especially if it is pronounced with marked divisions, syllable by syllable.3 This last fact, observed in several cases of word deafness where acoustic memories were unim paired, is particularly significant.
Strieker's4 mistake was to believe in a complete internal repetition of the words that are heard. His assertion is already contradicted by the simple fact that we do not know of a single case of motor aphasia which brought out word deafness. But all the facts combine to prove the existence of a motor tendency to separate the sounds and to establish their diagram. This automatic tendency is not without (as we said above) a certain elementary mental effort: how otherwise could we identify with each other, and consequently follow with the same diagram, 1 Ballet, Le langage interieur. Paris, 1888, p. 85.
8 See the three cases cited by Arnaud in the Archives de neurologic, 1886, p. 366 et seq. (Contrib. clinique a I 'elude de la surdite verbale, 2? article). — Cf. Schmidt's case, Gehors- und Sprachstdrung in Folgc von Apoplexic (Allg. Zeitschriften /. Psychiatric, 1871, vol. xxvii, p. 304).
4 Strieker, Studien iiber die Sprachvorstellung. Vienna, 1880.
CHAP, it REALIZATION OF MEMORIES 145 similar words pronounced on different notes and by different qualities of voice? These inner movements of repeating and recognizing are like a prelude to voluntary attention. They mark the limit between the voluntary and the automatic. By them, as we hinted before, the characteristic phenomena of intellectual recogni tion are first prepared and then determined. But what is this complete and fully conscious recognition?
2. We come to the second part of our subject: from movements we pass to memories. We have Transition to sa^ that attentive recognition ie a kind ?*™ of °^ circuit, in which the external object to us deeper and deeper parts itself, as our memory adopts a n?- correspondingly higher degree of tension cai process. jn or(jer to project recollections towards it. In the particular case we are now considering, the object is an interlocutor whose ideas develop within his consciousness into auditory representa tions which are then materialized into uttered words. So, if we are right, the hearer places him self at once in the midst of the corresponding ideas, and then develops them into acoustic memories which go out to overlie the crude sounds perceived, while fitting themselves into the motor diagram. To follow an arithmetical addition is to do it over again for ourselves. To understand another's words is, in like manner, to reconstruct intelli- L 146 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n gently, starting from the ideas, the continuity of sound which the ear perceives. And, more gener ally, to attend, to recognize intellectually, to interpret, may be summed up in a single opera tion whereby the mind, having chosen its level, having selected within itself, with reference to the crude perceptions, the point that is exactly symmetrical with their more or less immediate cause, allows to flow towards them the memories that will go out to overlie them.
Such, however, is certainly not the usual way of looking at the matter. The associationist habit is there; and, in accordance with it, we find men maintaining that, by the mere effect of contiguity, the perception of a sound brings back the memory of the sound and memories bring back the cor responding ideas. And then, we have the cerebral lesions which seem to bring about a destruction of memories; more particularly, in the case we are studying, there are the lesions of the brain found in word deafness. Thus psychological observa tions and clinical facts seem to conspire. To gether they seem to point to the existence, within the cortex, of auditory memories slumbering, whether as a physico-chemical modification of cer tain cells or under some other form. A sensory stimulation is then supposed to awaken them; and, finally, by an intra-cerebral process, perhaps by trans-cortical movements that go to find the complementary representations, they are supposed to evoke ideas.
CHAT, ii REALIZATION OF MEMORIES 147 Now consider lor a moment the amazing con sequences of an hypothesis of this kind. The auditory image of a word is not an object with well-defined outlines; for tne same word pronounced by different theS8woSd' voices, or by the same voice on different dbwte notes> gives a different sound. So, if You adopt the hypothesis of which we have been speaking, you must assume that there are as many auditory images of the same word as there are pitches of sound and qualities of voice. Do you mean that all these images are treasured up in the brain? Or is it that the brain chooses? If the brain chooses one of them, whence comes its pre ference? Suppose, even, that you can explain why the brain chooses one or the other; how is it that this same word, uttered by a new person, gives a sound which, although different, is still able to rejoin the same memory? For you must bear in mind that this memory is supposed to be an inert and passive thing and consequently incapable of discovering, beneath external differences, an internal similitude. You speak of the auditory image of a word as if it were an entity or a genus: such a genus can, indeed, be constructed by an active memory which extracts the resemblance of several com plex sounds and only retains, as it were, their common diagram. But, for a brain that is sup posed — nay, is bound — to record only the materi- MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n ality of the sounds perceived, there must be, of one and the same word, thousands of distinct images. Uttered by a new voice, it will constitute a new image, which will simply be added to the others. But there is something still more perplexing. A word has an individuality for us only from the moment that we have been taught to abstract it. What we first hear are short phrases, not words. A word is always continuous with the other words which accompany it, and takes different aspects according to the cadence and movement of the sentence in which it is set: just as each note of a melody vaguely reflects the whole musi cal phrase. Suppose, then, that there are indeed model auditory memories, consisting in certain intra-cerebral arrangements, and lying in wait for analogous impressions of sound: these impressions may come, but they will pass unrecognized. How could there be a common measure, how could there be a point of contact, between the dry, inert, isolated image and the living reality of the word organized with the rest of the phrase? I understand clearly enough that beginning of auto matic recognition which would consist, as I have said above, in emphasizing inwardly the principal divisions of the sentence that is heard, and so in adopting its movement. But, unless we are to suppose in all men identical voices pronouncing in the same tone the same stereotyped phrases, I fail to see how the words we hear are able to rejoin their images in the brain.
CHAP. n. REALIZATION OF MEMORIES 149 Now, if memories are really deposited in the cortical cells, we should find in sensory aphasia, The pheno- for instance, the irreparable loss of sory aphasia do certain determined words, the integral not point to the.., _^ existence of Conservation OI Others. But, as a mat- but suggest a ter of fact, things happen quite differ- very different, 0...,..
hypothesis. entry, bometimes it is the whole set of memories that disappears, the faculty of mental hearing being purely and simply abol ished; sometimes there is a general weakening of the function; but it is usually the function which is diminished and not the number of recollections. It seems as if the patient had no longer strength to grasp his acoustic memories, as if he turned round about the verbal image without being able to hit upon it. To enable him to recover a word it is often enough to put him on the track of it, by giving him its first syllable,1 or even by merely encouraging him.2 An emotion may produce the same effect.8 There are, however, cases in which it does indeed seem that definite groups of representations have disappeared from memory. I have passed in review a large number of these facts, and it has seemed that they could be referred 1 Bernard, op. tit., pp. 172 and 179. Cf. Babilde, Les troubles de la memoire dans I'alcoolisme. Paris, 1886 (medical thesis), P- 44- 2 Rieger, Bcschreibung der Intelligenzstorungen in Folge einer Hirnverletzung. Wurzburg, 1889, p. 35.
8 Wernicke, Der aphasische Symptomencomplex. Breslau, 1874, p. 39. — Cf. Valentin, Sur un cas d'aphasie d'origine traumatiqne (Revue medicale de I'Est, 1880, p. 171).
I5O MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n to two absolutely distinct categories. In the first, the loss of memories is usually abrupt; in the second, it is progressive. In the first, the recollections detached from memory are arbitrarily and even capriciously chosen: they may be certain words, certain figures, or often all the words of an acquired language. In the second, the disappearance of the words is governed by a methodical and grammatical order, that which is indicated by Ribot's law: proper names go first, then common nouns, and lastly verbs.1 Such are the external differences. Now this, I believe, is the internal difference. In the amnesias of the first type, which are nearly always the result of a violent shock, I incline to think that the memories which are apparently destroyed are really present, and not only present but acting. To take an example frequently borrowed from Forbes Winslow,2 that of a patient who had forgotten the letter F, and the letter F only, I wonder how it is possible to subtract a given letter wherever met with, — to detach it, that is, from the spoken or written words in which it occurs, — if it were not first implicitly re cognized. In another case cited by the same author,' the patient had forgotten languages 1 Ribot, Les maladies de la memoir e. Paris, 1881, p. 131 et seq.
2 Forbes Winslow, On Obscure Diseases of the Brain. London, 1861.
3 Ibid., p. 372 CHAP, n REALIZATION OF MEMORIES he had learnt and poems he had written. Hav ing begun to write again, he reproduced nearly the same lines. Moreover, in such cases the patient may often recover the lost memories. Without wishing to be too dogmatic on a question of this kind, we cannot avoid noticing the analogy be tween these phenomena and that dividing of the self of which instances have been described by Pierre Janet: l some of them bear a remark able resemblance to the ' negative hallucinations/ and suggestions with point de replre, induced by hypnotizers.2 — Entirely different are the aphasias of the second kind, which are indeed the true aphasias. These are due, as we shall try to show presently, to the progressive diminution of a well- localized function, the faculty of actual izing the recollection of words. How are we to explain the fact that amnesia here follows a methodical course, beginning with proper nouns and ending with verbs? We could hardly explain it if the verbal images were really deposited in 1 Pierre Janet, Etat mental des hysteriques. Paris, 1894, vol. ii, p. 263 et seq. — Cf. UAutomatisme psychologique, by the same author, Paris, 1889.
2 See Grashey's case, studied afresh by Sommer, and by him declared to be inexplicable by the existing theories of aphasia. In this instance, the movements executed by the patient seem to me to have been signals addressed by him to an independent memory. (Sommer, Zur Psychologic der Sprache, Zeitschr. f. Psychol. u. Physiol. der Sinnesorgane, vol. ii, 1891, p. 143 et seq.) — Cf. Sommer's paper at the Con gress of German Alienists, Arch, de Neurologie, vol. xxiv, 1892).
152 MATTER AND MEMORY CHAP, n