ion in the speech muscles is followed by reciprocal incoming
impressions appertaining to the sense and feeling of the movement. The more
intense the sense of movement, the greater will be the effect upon
consciousness. In fact, a person who reads and thinks by articulating the
words, does so because experience has taught him that he can concentrate
his attention more perfectly; therefore his memory or understanding of the
subject read or thought of will be increased. Very many people think and
commit to memory by this method of concentrating attention; they probably
do not belong to the quick, perceptive, imaginative class, but rather to
those who have power of application and who have educated their minds by
close voluntary attention. Galton found a large proportion of the Fellows
of the Royal Society were of this motor type. But the fact that certain
individuals make use of this faculty more than others does not destroy the
arguments in favour of the primary revival of words in the great majority
of persons by a subconscious process in the auditory centre, which is
followed immediately by correlated revival of sensori-motor images.
Although the sensori-motor images of speech can be revived, it is almost
impossible without moving the hand to revive kinaesthetic impressions
concerned in writing a word. Both Ballet and Stricker admit this fact, and
it tends to prove that the sense of hearing is the primary incitation to
speech.
Charcot in reference to the interpretation of speech defects divided
persons into four classes--auditives, visuals, motors, and indifferents.
There are really no separate classes, but only different kinds of
word-memory in different degrees of excellence as regards the first three;
and as regards the fourth there is no one kind of memory developed to a
preponderating degree. Bastian doubts the second class, but does not deny
that the visual type may exist; for Galton has undoubtedly shown that
visual memory and power of recall of visual word images varies immensely in
different individuals, and it is unquestionable that certain individuals
possess the visualising faculty to an extraordinary degree; some few,
moreover, can see mentally every word that is uttered; they give their
attention to the visual symbolic equivalent and not to the auditory. Such
persons may, as Ribot supposes, habitually think and represent objects by
visual typographic images. Lord Macaulay and Sir James Paget were notable
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