The power
came back after taking food and wine. Old age notoriously impairs the
memory in ninety-nine men out of a hundred."
My father then continued: "It seems to me quite clear that our memory,
at any rate, however little of our other mental attributes is engaged in
matter, is quite constructed in a series of molecular arrangements of
our nervous tissues. No doubt there is memory also in that subtle fluid
that survives death, but, inasmuch as memory is so closely expressed in
physical or material units or elements, does it not seem plain that as
spirits we shall probably lose memory?
"The material structure in which it existed, which in a sense was memory
itself, is dissipated by death. Memory disappears with it. But perhaps
not wholly. Some shadow of itself remains. What will most likely be
treasured then? The strongest, deepest memories only. Those which are
so subjectively strong as to leave even in the spirit _flesh_ an
impression. In this same little book of Bain's this sentence occurs:
'Retention, Acquisition, or Memory, then, being the power of continuing
in the mind, impressions that are no longer stimulated by the original
agent, and of recalling them at after-times by purely mental forces, I
shall remark first on the cerebral seat of those renewed impressions. It
must be considered as almost beyond a doubt that the _renewed feeling
occupies the very same parts, and in the same manner as the original
feeling_, and no other parts, nor in any other manner that can be
assigned.
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