The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-12-26
THE TRICKS OF MEMORY.
Which are Frequently Found to Be Responsible for Statements Ap-
 parentlY Mendacious.

Responsible for Statements Ap-
 parently Mendacious.
 Army and Navy Journal.
 The experiences of the Schley court Of ness of the theory to which we have be- fore alluded, that memory is not facul- ty which only occasionally play us tricks but one that is habitually unreliable. Neither the honorable man nor the liar can, on all occasions be depended upon for exactitude of testimoney. The diner- ence between them Is that one of them correctly reports the mental impression he has received and retained, while the other misrepresents, either from malice or mere mendacity. Yet the srecollection or the honest man may be as far from the fact as the tergiversatiop of the liar. Sentiment for and against an individual, self-interest, excitement of any Kind, or absorption in other ideas at the time an impression is received, may so distort the mental image 1s to wholly msrepreseht the fact and thus make it impossible Tor one to correctly report 1t. Let any one | try to verify a particular recollection ny reference to memoranda, or return to | the scene of past occurrence ana ne will realize the truth Of this statement | But no amount of humiliating discover 1 ies of this proneness to err in recollec- | tion ever seems to cure some men or the l disposition to denounce as liars those whose report of events does not agree with their own. This fault is not wholly unknown among military men, whose Ol slow to accuse others of an onense Tor l. which they would hold themselves in contempt.
 | fcundation in an exactitude of obser- vation, of which the majority of men are | incapable. When it concerns the report | of events for the knowledge of which we | are in part dependent upon the testi- | mony of others, it Is difficult If not impossible to distinguish between the | impression that records our observation at the time. which may have been Tn It. | self inaccurate, and that received rom | others more or less careless or fnadVer- | tent in their talk. In every group IS l usually to be found some one who seat. | ters epithets with lavish loosehess 9a | expression, and 1t is not always possible l to escape the contamination of his in- | fuence, especially where our sympathles | are with him. ,. | Our Civil War was prolific in misunder- 1 standings, as all wars have been. The re- | ports as to the details of occurrences | are found. upon impartial inVesigalIoh to be misleading when the larger events l of history are correctly reported for- tunately. these are all the world cares to | know or needs to know. What matters | if when we learn that Thompris never | said. Cyrus, thy thirst was blood that | Nerves never fogged the Hellespont, | that the anecdote of Tell and the apple | is a myth. that Wellington never sac; at Waterloo. up guards, and at them, and that the saying. La Garde meurt, | mais ne rend pas" is equally without
 warrant of authority? There can be no doubt as to the Persian invasion or Greece, or that Waterloo nurieo & Na- poleon from his throne and sent him into l exile at Helena. Note the contradictions 1 concerning the history of the war In the Crimea, the ireconcilability or kinslaKe and Todleben. - uo | porter of events is shown by the fact that the clearness and certainty or one recollection often increases as the event
 
 | events, that give support to some theory
 we hold, to some prejudice that warps our judgment or to some parttallty that
 seeks for proof of its Jusuce: VIII dis.Inctfv pe
 before us, while all qualifying expres,, sions or actions will have disappearea
 from, our recollection as utterly as thougn
 they had never been. Possibly tms lac' ,c
 may serve to explain some Of the dit-
 ferences of statement ana contraulc'
 of testimony before the schley court.
 Each of us is persuaded Of the Veracly
 of his own recollection and the unVerac-
 ity of that of the one differing with hlnl,
 whereas memory itself is trlckster, ana the best of us may be deceived oy lt al . l arc liars" how do we escape condemna- tion ourselves? Of the innumerable
 thoughts and experiences common to nIe- times, how few are recalled, ana u lS no m. II nossible to say how far those that nave passed beyond our memory might nave modified the impression we retain anu
 saved us from the painful necessity or
 contradicting some one, as honoraD,e ,an,, anu truthful as ourselves, whose memory may | have retained what has escaped ours.
 We find in our minds sometmhs Wnlcn we call a remembrance, and Which apper l tains in truth to the faculty or memory l hut if reproduces not the event IL as sumes to record. but the idea or IT, l which. after twenty mystifying repeu- tions, has for the moment the uppermost
 plSGS WSv ii are % our minds in a blank as to l so large a part of our conscious experi-
 ence. while here and there some slnsle
 fact is retained in recGheG.Tti re itS citation to
 other facts or it's relative importance
 Is 1t not because some chance mas leI
 us to dwell upon particular evehS ehe 4ha
 has thus deepened and perpetuated tne
 imnression received in the shady past
 And how, with all collateral events lose Ne
 fo memory can we make sure that the
 original impression was tne ,, SV S'V,conscious
 seIf. deception and the unveracity or the
 yeracious as by the willful misrepreseh-
 tations of the dishonest. ,, Ga
 sseo strong is the dramatic element m
 us all" says a writer on the subject oI
 the "Fallacies of Memory that tS"
 aver detail a narrative without complet-
 ing it by some touehes 9' n3t InIieved to
 trIIe- though conscientiously peheVeu to
 exnlain the truth; to supply the genulIle
 reason for this speech or the other oI ao
 tion. or to bring into rehet the req, n,a
 csn ieg,'lsS never T witness any transaction with out making some theory of the motlves' dves snd in telling the history thereof we in-
 evitably work out this theory in our de-
 scription." s o,ant,aman,,
 x necessarily relieve one from his
 eUTS a,3hordination to the infirmities of hu- hl
 7onD nature, eevn to the extent of gift
 ing him with an infallible .o.era [eCo,ece'oiT, in
 T,ef each one be charitable. therefore, III
 LSg i,1dgrnent of others concerning mat teTs t,. of differences in recollection
 oo>,v1IEscENCB after pneumonia.