Can We Forget?

IMPROVEMENT ERA.

Vol. III. MAY, 1900. No. 7.

CAN WE FORGET? BY DR. JAMES E. TALMAGE, OF THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH.

Who of US has not blamed at times our treacherous memories, which seem to hide what it is most desirable to see at a critical moment? Who has not yearned for the power to make the past present when desired? Yet many, and I believe all at times, are thankful for oblivion which casts its sable pall over much that we are glad to have forgotten. It is said that a philosopher once exclaimed, "Oh, that the gods would grant me the power to forget!" Ah! how often do memories of the past arise, like ghosts at the feast, to and harass torment! The consciousness of opportunities neglected, of misdeeds committed; the knowledge of unholy thoughts, of cruel words, of sinful acts, how they invade our hours of otherwise pleasant repose, our seasons of enjoyment, and even our sacred periods of prayer! Gladly would we blot out from memory's book the record of many an occurrence in mind or fact, the recollection of which pricks and burns. The contemplative mind is thankful for the boon of present forgetfulness, and would not welcome the power of infinite remembrance.

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Yet I take it, that when we declaim at memory for its fickleness and treachery, when we deplore our inability to recall a serviceable fact at the moment of need, we misplace our blame. It

is not the memory, but the recollection that is at fault. Memory is the library of the mind, wherein are stored thoughts, facts, incidents, that have entered into life's experience, laid away like books upon the shelves. Not a volume is lost, not a leaf is consumed. Unclassified they may lie in the disorder of habitual carelessness, dust-covered, and often eaten into by the moths of time, because we account them, and therefore neglect them, as of earth earthy; yet they are not destroyed, the pages are still legible. Recollection is the librarian, whose duty it is to place the volumes in position, the pages in order; and who, when roused from the lethargy into which he so often falls, can bring them forth as required, brushing the dust from their edges, and spreading the pages clear and plain for inspection. Seek rather to cultivate the efficiency of recollection than that of memory; the latter is less amenable to control, it operates in spite of us like the involuntary muscles of the body; the former may be trained to our service. Think you it is possible to forget absolutely—to blot out from memory's catalogue a single instance so that it may never be recalled? No! that power has not been given unto man. The human mind is like the palimpsest of the ancients, one impression thereon may be superseded by another but not destroyed. Have you ever thought of the marvels of the palimpsest? Let me explain. In olden times when paper in the cheapness and plentitude of modern days was unknown, when books were written laboriously by hand, letter by letter, each volume was a treasure procurable by the riches of the wealthy alone. The skins of animals converted into parchment formed the fabric which received the pen- — written characters far more costly, and proportionately more durable, than the paper of the present day which is read in haste or wholly slighted and thrown aside. On such parchment pages were inscribed with care and labor the thoughts of those who wrote. Sometimes it happened that the fabric of the book was of — more material value than the inscription may not the same be

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said of many a current volume, cheap as is the paper of this age? But in times gone by, parchment once used was not to be discarded even though the record on it was of little worth. The art of the alchemist was invoked to obliterate one inscription that space might be found for another. Thus the record of theological lore was blotted out to give space for the historian's essay; and this in turn was cleared away that place might be found for the poet's song of chivalry and love; and this, having served its time and purpose, suffered the fate of chemic obliteration that the legends and arguments of the scientist's theory might be inscribed, and this in turn was superceded by a modern romance. But let it not be supposed that these records of the past perished beyond hope. Modern chemistry has arisen, more potent than the alchemy from whose ashes it sprang, and by its subtle processes each impression has been brought out in its order to be read in the day of the fullness of times. By a treatment not understood outside the laboratory, the scientist's theory, the historical disserta tion, the poet's rhapsody, and the thesis of the ancient theologian, each has been renewed, and thus words of writers long since mingled with the dust are read and understood. Such a palimpsest is the mind of man; the comparison is not original, but I borrow it to present to you forwhat it is worth. A newer impression may blot out for a time the earlier inscription on memory's page, as this in turn may give place to a still more recent record, but sooner or later, by the mystic processes of Nature's laboratory, each record will be renewed in its order, and by it the writer will be judged. Every tissue of our bodily organisms is endowed with the power of memory. The hand that has been taught to pilfer will not easily forget its unholy cunning, and, if the monitorial mind be off its guard, would reach out and clutch though it were within reach of the pearls that ornament the gates of the Heavenly City. Every act, whether it be relatively important or insignificant, leaves stamped upon the organs concerned in its perpetration a tendency toward a repetition. Neither body nor spirit will forget its training; not even the grave can rob it of its education. The body that has been accustomed to dissipation and vice

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shall come forth from the grave craving the unholy gratification to which it has been trained. Teach the stomach or the nervous system to love the exhilaration of drunken excitement, or the orgies of sexual sin, surely shall the resurrected frame crave the stimulus and the gratification to which it has been inured; the grave cannot kill those unholy passions; the body does not forget. We talk of "second nature ;"'tis a misleading term; we have but one nature, and that the algebraic sum of the habits to which we have accustomed ourselves. The microscopic cells, the fibres of the muscles, the tissues of brain and nerves, all are subject to the influences of education for righteousness or for evil. Not an act ends with itself be it good or bad; its reflex action will be manifest in the tendency to repeat, the tissues concerned will remember their lesson, and, apt pupils as they are, will be the more ready to put the example mto practice. 'Twould be a flattering unction for the sinful soul if the past were truly past; but the effects of the past are persistently present with us. And the future has in store a day in which even the details of the past are to be reproduced —the uncovering and renewal of the palimpsest of the brain which every one will have to acknowledge. For a time we may fail to recollect; eventually everyone of us will remember the past to our honor or to our condemnation. The skeptic has sneered and scoffed at the idea of a recording angel registering the acts of men; why, the very cells of the bodies of men record the experiences through which they have passed. Not a fibre forgets, not a cell loses its memory. It is likewise true that in inanimate matter no less than in living tissues is the record of the past preserved. Consider the following forceful words of a writer whose name I do not at this moment recall "De minibus non curat lex" — [the law does not concern itself

with trifles] "is a legal maxim; but in the vocabulary of Nature, 'little' and 'great' are terms of comparison only. She knows no trifles, and her laws are as inflexible in dealing with an atom as with a continent or a planet. No atom can be disturbed in space, or undergo any change of temperature, of electrical condition, or of other material condition, without affecting the surrounding atoms; by the same law these again transmit the influence to other atoms, and the

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influence thus given extends through the whole material universe. Every human movement, every organic act, every volition, passion or emotion, every intellectual process, is accompanied with atomic disturbance; and hence, every such act or process affects all the atoms of universal matter. Though action and reaction are equal, yet reaction does not return atoms to their former place and condition; consequently, the effects of the least material change are not cancelled but are in some way perpetuated. Hence there exists, not alone in the human conscience or in the omniscience of the Creator, but in external, material nature, an ineffacable imperishable record of every act done, every word uttered, nay, of every wish and thought conceived by mortal man from the birth of our first parents to our final end. Thus the physical traces of our most secret sins shall last till Time merges into that Eternity, of which not science but religion alone assumes to take cognizance." Did you ever examine the fossils which the geologist has dug out of the rocks of by-gone ages? What a story they tell! How perfectly they testify to past conditions! The foot-print in the

hardened sandstone may reveal the existence of bird, reptile, or

mammal, long since disappeared; the stony page may be read by him who has learned the language of its inscription, and may tell of rainstorms and rippling seas long past. Note the words of Winchell, suggested and inspired by the sight of fossil foot-tracks in hardened stone: "It is a solemn and impressive thought that the footprints of dumb and senseless creatures have been preserved in all their perfection for thousands of ages. * * * The solitary biped which stalked along the margin of a New England inlet, before the human race was born, pressed foot-prints in the soft and shining sand which the rising and sinking of the continent could not wipe out." And further, ponder these lines from Emerson's pen: "Everything in Nature is engaged in writing its own history; the plant and the pebble are attended by their shadows; the rolling rock leaves its furrow on the mountain side, and the river its channel in the soil; the animal its bones in the stratum; the fern and leaf inscribe their images on the rock; the falling drop sculptures its story on the sand and the stone — in the foot-step on