Thus it is that, as regards the phenomena of memory, our inner personality is seized upon by the same process by which it was seized upon on the arrival of sensorial impressions ; only that these impressions which call it into activity prolong their action, implant themselves in the organism, and become, as it were, a vibratory echo of the past. It is thus then, that the reminiscence of anterior excitations perpetuates itself in the sensorium with the particular coefficients of joy or sorrow that have presided over their genesis in the peripheral regions, and thus a series of emotions related to each of them becomes developed, and perpetuates itself in the central sensitive regions of our organism.
The phenomena of psychical and moral activity, understood as we have previously explained, perpetuate themselves in a similar manner, and develop incessantly, by the mere calling into activity of the two fundamental processes of the nerve-cells—sensibility, and that pecu liar retentive power, organic phosphorescence, by means of which they prolong the vibratory excitations which have first set them in motion.
In the domain of intellectual activity it is still the same force that underlies most of the dynamic opera tions to which this activity gives birth.
It is, indeed, because he remembers, because his sensi bility has been impressed in a special manner, and this impression is persistent in him, that the young child, from the first instant of his life, expresses his inner sentiments. It is because he remembers, that he recognizes external objects and names them with an appropriate word, which he has retained in his memory from having heard it. It is by means of the persist
ence of acoustic impressions, preserved in the state of sonorous reminiscences, that he speaks, and that his phonetic expressions are applied to each surrounding object.
It is also by the same means that he learns to trace written characters, which he recognizes as the symbolic expression of absent objects, and that he reads aloud, transforming each written character into sonorous concordant expressions which he knows to be their equivalents.
There are always at the bottom of these different operations of the intelligence, persistent sensorial im pressions which direct the processes in evolution, and vibrate like a faithful echo of the first impression. It is the same with that admirable faculty which the human being possesses, the power of translating into verbal ex pression his emotions and the thoughts which pass throughhis mind. It is because man has learned that each word expresses an external object, a thought, a sentiment, and because this acquired notion, preserved by daily use, is maintained in him in a state of permanent freshness, that he speaks, addresses his kind, and is understood by them. It is memory—the accumulated reminis cences always present to the mind—that forms the basis of his language, and thus becomes the inex haustible store in which he finds the means of express ing what he feels and what he thinks.