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An element of this kind, overlooked in the formulation of a supposedly simple connection between cause A and effect C, is labeled Hidden Z, by Alfred Sedgwick. The Hidden Z in this case is what James calls the topic-of-thought, Ebbinghaus the set-of-the-mind, and others apperception-mass. In rhetoric it is familiar as context. It has an important place in thought and speech.
Ebbinghaus now systematically studied the number of readings-over which were necessary to revive the unhesitating recollection of the piece after five minutes, half an hour, an hour, a day, a week, a month, had elapsed. The number of rereadings required he took to be a measure of the amount of forgetting that had occurred in the elapsed interval. And he found some remarkable facts.
The following analogy of Ebbinghaus puts the matter clearly: "When a train enters a large station there are many paths over which it might pass; but its actual path depends on the position which was given to the switches immediately before the train's arrival."
Ebbinghaus' "heroism" in the pursuit of true averages, his high critical acumen, his modest tone, and his polished style, it will be seen that we have a new-comer in psychology from whom the best may be expected. W.J., Science.
This interesting affirmation is not new: it may be read in the works of Mach, Külpe, Münsterberg, and, especially, of Ebbinghaus, from whom I quote the following lines of quite remarkable clearness: "Psychology is not distinguished from sciences like physics and biology, which are generally and rightly opposed to it, by a different content, in the way that, for instance, zoology is distinguished from mineralogy or astronomy.
The new sort of study of the mind bears the same relation to the older psychology that the microscopic anatomy of the body does to the anatomy of its visible form, and the one will undoubtedly be as fruitful and as indispensable as the other. Dr. Ebbinghaus makes an original addition to heroic psychological literature in the little work whose title we have given.
He would take perhaps half a year's lecture course on the whole field of psychology as covered in the English language by the well-known text-books of James, Wundt, Titchener, Judd, Royce, Calkins, Angell, Baldwin, Kuelpe, Ebbinghaus, Thorndike, Stout, Ziehen, Ladd, and so on.
But the incidental results are usually the most pregnant in this department; and two of those which Dr. Ebbinghaus has reached seems to us to amply justify his pains. The first is, that, in forgetting such things as these lists of syllables, the loss goes on very much more rapidly at first than later on.
Ebbinghaus, "Abriss der Psychologie;" Max Meyer's version, Cf. pp. 94-5; "Ebbinghaus's Psychology," 1908; D. C. Heath & Co., Boston. "Inventorial Record Forms of Use in the Analysis of Dreams," Jour. Ab. Psychology, Feb.-Mar., 1914. Descartes, Rene, "Discours de la Methode pour bien conduire sa raison et chercher la verite dans les sciences;" Leyde, 1637.
Professor Ebbinghaus, in a heroic little investigation into the laws of memory which he performed a dozen or more years ago by the method of learning lists of nonsense syllables, devised a method of measuring the rate of our forgetfulness, which lays bare an important law of the mind. His method was to read over his list until he could repeat it once by heart unhesitatingly.
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