MEMORY

Mental capacity; the mental power to review and recognize the successive states of consciousness in their consecutive order. This word, as used in jurisprudence to denote one of the psychological elements necessary in the making of a valid will or contract or the commission of a crime, implies the mental power to conduct a consecutive train of thought, or an orderly planning of affairs, by recalling correctly the past states of the mind and past events, and arranging them in their due order of sequence and in their logical relations with the events and mental states of the present. The phrase “sound and disposing mind and memory” means not merely distinct recollection of the items of one’s property and the persons among whom it may be given, but entire power of mind to dispose of property by will. Abbott. Also the reputation and name, good or bad, which a man leaves at his death. Legal memory. An ancient usage, custom, supposed grant (as a foundation for prescription) and the like, are said to be immemorial when they are really or fictitiously of such an ancient date that “the memory of man runneth not to the contrary,” or. in other words, “beyond legal memory.” And legal memory or “time out of mind,” according to the rule of the common law, commenced from the reign of Bichard I., A. D. 1189. But under the statute of limitation of 32 Hen. VIII. this was reduced to 60 years, and again by that of 2 & 3 Wm. IV. c. 71, to 20 years. In the American states, by statute, the time of legal memory is generally fixed at a period corresponding to that prescribed for actions for the recovery of real property, usually about 20 years.