the little people who live in your head

Thomas Edison was a deep thinker who pondered on many different things

image found here

What I believe is that our bodies are made up of myriads of units of life. Our body is not itself the unit of life or a unit of life. We have myriads of cells, and it is the inhabitants in these cells, inhabitants which themselves are beyond the limits of the microscope, which vitalize and “run” our body.

more Horror Under the Microscope images found here

We do not remember; a certain group of our little people do this for us. They live in that part of the brain which has become known as the “fold of Broca.” Broca discovered and proved that everything we call memory goes on in a little strip not much more than a quarter of an inch long. That is where the little people live who keep our records for us.

more Tiny Plastic People found here

Some of the little peoples who enable us to remember things do nothing else during our entire lives but watch moving picture shows. The optic nerves bring the pictures through the small holes in the front of our skulls into our brains where the little peoples whose function it is to remember can see them. We do not remember everything we see because everything is not worth remembering. Little Peoples, like big peoples, are of various degrees of intelligence.

There may be twelve or fifteen shifts that change about and are on duty at different times like men in a factory. I infer this from the fact that we sometimes have to send for the particular ones that have the records we want.

We have forgotten a man’s name, for instance. We ask the shift of little peoples who happen to be on duty, “What is that man’s name?” They were not on duty when the name was given to them to remember and they don’t know. After a while, suggestion or something else summons the shift that has the name and they give it. I therefore take it that the possession of what is called a good memory really means the possession of the ability to summon the particular groups of little peoples who have the records we want.

Little People corkscrew collection found here