race-records.


PERSONAL MEMORIES

No more startling secret has been unearthed by science than the
discovery of the length and minuteness of our memories. No matter how
much one may think he has forgotten, the tablets of his mind are
closely written with records of infinitesimal experiences, shadowy
sensations, old happenings which the conscious self has lost entirely
and would scarcely recognize as its own. Many of these brain records,
or neurograms, as Prince calls them, are never aroused from their
dormant conditions. But others, aroused by emotion or association of
ideas, may after years of inactivity, come forth again either as
conscious memories or as subconscious forces, or even as physiological
memories,--bodily repetitions of the pains, palpitations, and tremors
of old emotional experiences.

=Irresistible Childhood.= An experience that is forgotten is not
necessarily lost. Although the first few years of childhood are lost
to conscious memory, these years outweigh all others in their
influence on character. The Jesuit priest was right when he said,
"Give me a child until he is six years old, and he will be a Catholic
all his life." As Frink has so ably shown, the determining factors
that enter into any adult choice, such as the choice of the Catholic
or the Protestant faith, are in a large measure made up of
subconscious memories from early childhood, forgotten memories of
Sunday-school and church, of lessons at home or passages in
books,--experiences which no voluntary effort could recall, but which
still live unrecognized in our mature judgments and beliefs. Naturally