FACIAL MEMORY. T HERE is something in the bare act of
recognition, both o? persons and places, which, unless we happen to hate them, is in itself pleasurable. Those who have been long away from their native place recognize its landmarks with delight, having little regard to their happiness when they lived among them. The sudden sight of a once familiar spire, of a few trees on a hilltop, of a room or a garden, even of the longest and least lovely of streets, gives a thrill of pleasure to the man who has known them long igo. The recognizer experiences something which is the antithesis of a momentary attack of homesickness. A little waft of mental health comes with the sight which was once familiar. Probably where the things of the intellect are concerned no gift arouses the same gratification in its owner as an unusually good memory. We think of the joys of literary and artistic creation with awe, but we much doubt whether a man like Macaulay did not get a greater joy out of his supreme talent than Thackeray out of his genius. Even in the exercise of the common capacity to run off by heart any worthless string of words after two or three hearings there is great satisfaction, and half the pleasure of life consists, for many people, in being able to reproduce by heart for their own amusement the trivial dialogue of the daily drama which they watch as they go and come upon their lawful occasions.
There is another power of memory which is, we think, aLiaost more enviable, and that is facial memory. To be able to call up a face vividly, though it be one whose recollection we in no special sense treasure, is a very real advantage. The past lives in most men's minds as a holiday region. As we get older we tend to take too much time off in the fields of memory. In that world we walk at ease undisturbed by hope or fear. To some of us, however, there comes as we disport ourselves a ghostly sensation which strikes upon us like a sudden chill. The friends whose personality we recall with joy, sometimes so distinctly as to produce a feeling of actual recognition, seem to be turning away their faces, and to recede and vanish as soon as the strong desire to recall their features presents itself to the mind. The writer, who is almost without the power of facial recollection, supposes that those who have it are never thus balked of the pleasures of imagination. Does this particular development of the memory coincide, we wonder, with some power of drawing ? We do not necessarily mean with artistic gift, but with that sense of line which causes a man, when he is explaining the proportions of any given object, to help himself out with a pencil and paper. We imagine that the two peculiarities are allied. On the other hand, judging from what we have heard and observed of those who " never forget a face," they have some special instinct for the recognition of personality as well as feature. The writer was told the other day by a man of forty that he often recognized contemporaries with whom he had been at school, and whom he had not seen since they wore jackets. The years, he said, seemed to make no difference. He felt as though he had some strange knowledge of the changes they had passed through, as though, indeed, he had been with them all the while. How far this power depends upon the eyes it is not easy to say. It suggests a grasp of the essential and unalterable kernel of character over which the years have no control. Certainly it presupposes that a man takes an interest in his fellow-creatures, fez he must look intelligently upon the faces which make an indelible mark on his memory, and must indeed give his mind to them for a longer or shorter period. Royalty are supposed to be pre- eminently gifted in this manner, also they are supposed to be judges of men. The man who remembers has a great many social advantages. For one thing, he is in a position to pay the compliment f recollection to all those whom he has ever seen before, and to pay t without effort or insincerity.
Memory plays some very odd tricks on us all. For instance, occasionally happens that we meet some one who is, and is not, .stranger to us. We do not imagine that we have actually met urn before, but we have an inner sense of familiarity with his ook, voice, and deportment which is unconnected in our minds ith ordinary memory. There is nothing whatever portentous bout the experience. We are not alluding to any subtle sympathy, n; affinity of soul, any synonym for love or friendship at first ight. We mean a quite superficial, but quite definite, sense of anuliarity. We know in an instant just how that person will ak, will laugh, will move, before we see him do these things. e are quite at home with him. Does a man with an exceptional cial memory, we wonder, ever have this sensation ? If not, is probable that persons in whom facial memory is defective T deceived by their lack of the gift. Subconsciously they have gistered the personality of the person whose reappearance makes em wonder if this life is really their first upon earth. The `'ling is, of course, analogous to the often-remarked experience of eying passed before through the same situation as that in which o find ourselves. The whole scene strikes us as being enacted r the second time. This sensation, so far as we have heard, ver occurs at the great emotional crises of life, but comes at mmonplace moments without rhyme or reason. We feel as we had lived before, and the sponge which went over our mental to at birth had left a corner unwashed. In dreams, again, mory seems bent on teasing us. We find ourselves talking at
ease and intimately to persons of whom when we wake up we have none but a dream recollection. Are these dream intimates persons whom we have at least seen in this world, whose appearance memory mechanically reproduces, or are they not ? Here again we should like to know the experience of a man whose visual memory is clear in outline and far-reaching. We have often heard our friends say, and have been able to confirm their words from our own experience, that when they are falling asleep they see pictures of people and of places. These pictures bear the same relation to ordinary dreams as portraits' and landscapes do to the drama. No action is seen. The faces may be ordinary or grotesque, but they almost never resemble any one of the dreamer's acquaintance. Here again, however, he may be deceived by his want of power to recognize. The scenes—or should we say landscapes 1—are vividly clear, and present nothing but a much delimited fore- ground—so far as the writer's own experience goes—and he has often wondered if they are relics of babyish memory. The argu- ment against that is that they represent as a rule country things—a hedge in spring, or a cottage garden—and he was born and brought up in London. Are they perhaps scraps of ancestral memory ?
All children and all thinkers without science exhaust themselves in wondering in what part of the body the soul is lodged. It is certainly in the face that we trace its shadow. If sonic great decision in life depended upon a correct reading of physiognomy, to whom would most men apply for advice—to the professional student of the soul, or the professional student of the body, or to s portrait-painter, or to a man with the gift of facial memory ? We incline to think the last would be the most helpful. The wise parson is almost too apt to discount appearances. It is his duty to like every one so far as he is able, and the better man he is th3 more likely he is to be constantly trying to avoid the deception of impressions, to look for steadiness in the supposed rogue, interest in the obvious bore, strength in the coarse man, and human nature in the ultra-refined. The doctor, on the other hand, is apt, whatever his religious or moral conclusions, to be in practice a bit of a materialist. People fall into physical types before his eyes. The old division into phlegmatic and sanguine has not altogether lost its influence in medical circles. He could probably say whether an adult, or even a baby, had the full complement of wits, but of what nature those wits were he would have no special insight to enable him to decide. As a judge of character from face a portrait-painter is perhaps more hampered than either of these by his own personality. A portrait is always said to reveal almost more of the painter's than the sitter's soul. Moreover, an artist must be interested predominantly in that side of every man's personality which he can sat down on paper, and it may be a small side. For instance, he may show us that a man has a peculiarly sympathetic manner. The fact that he has a peculiarly dull conscience may not occur to him as of consequence. But the man with a good facial memory is always all his life engaged in comparing men's faces with their record. Even if he has no strong instinct to enable him to judge, lie has the facts before him. " These looks mean success and these failure," he comes to say to himself, "these domestic happiness and these misery, these force and these weakness, these courage and these cowardice." Given equal intelli- gence with the parson, the doctor, or the artist, his judgment or his prophecy would be the best worth consideration.
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