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things and bodily qualities. What it is to think, to remember, to imagine, to be angry or sorrowful, to believe or disbelieve, to approve or disapprove, we know by experience, as well as what it is to see and hear. And truth and falsehood, virtue and vice, are as real as sounds and colours, and much more essential to human happiness. Accordingly, in all cultivated languages, there are words to express memory, imagination, reason, conscience, true and false, just and unjust, right and wrong, &c.; which is a proof, that in all nations, not utterly barbarous, such things are attended to, and spoken of, as matters of importance. So much for consciousness in general. We are now to consider more particularly the several faculties comprehended in it. And first of memory.

SECTION VI.

Of Memory.

122. THIS is that faculty, by which we acquire experience and knowledge; and without which we should, at the end of the longest life, be as ignorant as at its beginning. Memory presents to us ideas or thoughts of what is past, accompanied with a persuasion that they were formerly real and present. What we distinctly remember to have seen we as firmly believe to have happened, as what is now present to our senses.

123. A sound state of the brain is no doubt necessary to the right exercise of both memory and judgment. And hence perhaps it is, that some philosophers have held, that all our perceptions and thoughts leave upon the brain certain marks or traces, which continue there for some time, and when attended to by the mind occasion remembrance; but that, when the brain is disordered by drunkenness, or any other disease, so as not to receive or retain such marks, or so as to receive or retain them imperfectly, there is then no remembrance, or a confused one. But this is mere conjecture, incapable of proof, and indeed absurd. For how thoughts of the mind, which are surely no corporeal things, should leave upon the brain, which is corporeal, particular stamps, variously sized and shaped according to the nature of the thoughts, and how the mind should take notice of those stamps, or remember by means of them, is altogether inconceivable. We know that we do remember; but of the immediate cause of remembrance we know nothing.

124. When we remember with little or no effort, it is called remembrance simply, or memory, and sometimes passive memory: when we endeavour to remember what does not immediately and (as it were) of itself occur, it is called active memory, or recollection. A ready recollection of our knowledge, at the moment when we have occasion for it, is a talent of the greatest importance. The

man possessed of it is generally of good parts, and seldom fails to distinguish himself, whatever sort of business he may be engaged in. But some persons, who are remarkable for what is here called passive memory, and can remember all the words of a long discourse on once hearing it, are, in other respects, of no great abilities. Brutes have memory, but of recollection they seem to be incapable; for this requires rationality, and the power of contemplating and arranging our thoughts. Great memory is perhaps necessary to form great genius, but is not always a proof of it.

125. The liveliest remembrance is not so lively as the sensation that produced it; and ideas of memory do often, but not always, decay more and more, as the original sensation becomes more and more remote in time. Those sensations, and those thoughts, have a chance to be long remembered, which are lively at first; and those are likely to be most lively, which are most attended to, or which are accompanied with pleasure or pain, or with wonder, surprise, curiosity, merriment, and other lively passions.

126. The art of memory, therefore, is little more than the art of attention. What we wish to remember we should attend to so as to understand it perfectly, fixing our view particularly upon its importance or singular nature; that it may raise within us some of the passions above mentioned: and we should also beforehand disengage our mind

'from other things, that we may the more effectually attend to the new object which we wish to remember; that being apt to be forgotten which occurs to us when we are taken up with other things. The memories of children should be continually exercised; but to oblige them to get by heart what they do not understand, perverts their faculties, gives them a dislike to learning, and confirms them in habits of inattention, and inaccurate pronunciation.

127. A habit of strictly attending to that, whatever it is, in which we happen to be engaged, and of doing only one thing at one time, is of great importance to intellectual improvement. It produces clearness and readiness of comprehension, presence of mind, accuracy of knowledge, and facility of expression. Attention to our company is a principal part of politeness, and renders their conversation and behaviour both amusing and instructive to us. We ought, therefore, to be constantly on our guard against contracting any of those habits of indolence, or a wandering mind, which, when long persisted in, form what is called an absent man.

128. Our thoughts have, for. the most part, a connection; so that the thought which is just now in the mind, depends partly upon that which went before, and partly serves to introduce that which follows. Hence we remember best those things whose parts are methodically disposed, and mutx

ally connected. A regular discourse makes a more lasting impression upon the hearer than a parcel of detached sentences, and gives to his rational powers a more salutary exercise: and this may show us the propriety of conducting our studies, and all our affairs, according to a regular plan or method. When this is not done, our thoughts and our business, especially if in any degree complex, soon run into confusion.

129. The Greek and Roman orators, who sometimes had occasion to deliver very long orations, and all from memory, took pains to fix in their minds a series of objects or places naturally connected, such as the contiguous houses in a street, or the contiguous apartments in a house. By long habit, these places were so arranged in their memory, that when the first place occurred to them, it introduced the idea of the second, and the second the third, and so forward; even as when the first letter of the alphabet, or the beginning of a well-known tune, occurs to the mind, it introduces the subsequent letters and notes in the proper order. Then the orator connected the first head of his discourse with the first of these places, the second with the second, &c. by thinking of both at the same time. And thus they were enabled to recollect, without confusion, all the parts of the longest discourse. This was called the artificial memory. Cicero and Quintilian both speak of it, but neither of them so minutely as to make

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