men.* But this being in great variety of degrees (as may be perceived amongst men) cannot certainly be discovered in the several species of animals, much less in their particular individuals. It suffices me only to have remarked here, that perception is the first operation of all our intellectual faculties, and the inlet of all knowledge in our minds. And

I am apt too to imagine, that it is perception in the lowest degree of it, which puts the boundaries between animals and the inferior ranks of creatures. But this I mention only as my conjecture, by the by, it being indifferent to the matter in hand which way the learned shall determine of it.

CHAPTER X.

OF RETENTION,

1. Contemplation.-THE next faculty of the mind, whereby it makes a further progress towards knowledge, is that which I call retention, or the keeping of those simple ideas which from sensation or reflection it hath received. This is done two ways: first, by keeping the idea which is brought into it, for some time actually in view, which is called contemplation.

2. Memory. The other way of retention is the power to revive again in our minds those ideas, which after imprinting have disappeared, or have been as it were laid aside out of sight; and thus we do, when we conceive heat or light,

* Upon the hints furnished by this passage, Helvetius seems chiefly to have constructed his extravagant theory, that "la sensibilité physique est la cause unique de nos actions, de nos pensées, de nos passions, et de notre sociabilité." (De l'Homme, Sect. II. chap. vii.)-ED.

Plato compares the memory of man to the tablets made use of by the ancients, which were covered with a coating of wax, thin or thick, according, apparently, as the articles were cheap or dear. In, some persons this wax is deep, fine, and exceedingly retentive of impressions; in others it is scanty, coarse, and yields up the characters inscribed on it to the slightest touch. (Thatet. Opp. tom. iii.) The reader will, perhaps, not be displeased if we extract a passage from Hobbes's masterly Treatise on Human Nature, a work in which may be discovered, wrapped up in the integuments of sundry brief and aphorismal phrases, the germs of many a theory, afterwards rendered celebrated, but without due honour being paid to our illustrious countryman. By the senses which are numbered according to the

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yellow or sweet, the object being removed. This is memory, which is as it were the storehouse of our ideas. For the narrow mind of man not being capable of having many ideas under view and consideration at once, it was necessary to have a repository to lay up those ideas which, at another time, it might have use of. But our ideas being nothing but actual perceptions in the mind, which cease to be anything when there is no perception of them, this laying up of our ideas in the repository of the memory signifies no more but this, that the mind has a power in many cases to revive perceptions which it has once had, with this additional perception annexed to them, that it has had them before. And in this sense it is that our ideas are said to be in our memories, when indeed they are actually nowhere, but only there is an ability in the mind when it will to revive them again, and as it were paint them anew on itself, though some with more, some with less difficulty; some more lively, and others more obscurely. And thus it is, by the assistance of this faculty, that we are said to have all those ideas in our understandings which, though we do not actually contemplate, yet we can bring in sight, and make appear again, and be the objects of our thoughts, without the help of those sensible qualities which first imprinted them there.

3. Attention, Repetition, Pleasure and Pain, fix Ideas.— Attention and repetition help much to the fixing any ideas in the memory; but those which naturally at first make the deepest and most lasting impressions, are those which are accompanied with pleasure or pain. The great business of the senses being to make us take notice of what hurts or advantages the body, it is wisely ordered by nature, as has organs to be five, we take notice (as has been said already) of the objects without us, and that notice is our conception thereof: but we take notice also, some way or other, of our conception, for when the conception of the same thing cometh again, we take notice that it is again, that is to say, that we have had the same conception before, which is as much as to imagine a thing past, which is impossible to the sense, which is only of things present; this therefore may be accounted a sixth sense, but internal; not external as the rest, and is commonly called remembrance." (Human Nature, chap. iii. § 6.) Aristotle likewise, in his hurried glance over the field of human knowledge, has treated separately of memory, and possibly created the basis upon which the whole philosophy of the subject has been built. (Oper. t. vii. p. 118 & 126. Tauchnitz.) -ED.

been shown, that pain should accompany the reception of several ideas; which supplying the place of consideration and reasoning in children, and acting quicker than consideration in grown men, makes both the old and young avoid painful objects, with that haste which is necessary for their preservation; and in both settles in the memory a caution for the future.

4. Ideas fade in the Memory.-Concerning the several degrees of lasting, wherewith ideas are imprinted on the memory, we may observe, that some of them have been produced in the understanding by an object affecting the senses once only, and no more than once; others, that have more than once offered themselves to the senses, have yet been little taken notice of: the mind, either heedless, as in children, or otherwise employed, as in men, intent only on one thing, not setting the stamp deep into itself. And in some, where they are set on with care and repeated impressions, either through the temper of the body or some other fault, the memory is very weak. In all these cases, ideas in the mind quickly fade, and often vanish quite out of the understanding, leaving no more footsteps or remaining characters of themselves than shadows do flying over fields of corn, and the mind is as void of them as if they had never been there.

5. Thus many of those ideas which were produced in the minds of children in the beginning of their sensation, (some of which perhaps, as of some pleasures and pains, were before they were born, and others in their infancy,) if in the future course of their lives they are not repeated again, are quite lost, without the least glimpse remaining of them.

may be observed in those who by some mischance have lost their sight when they were very young, in whom the ideas of colours having been but slightly taken notice of, and ceasing to be repeated, do quite wear out; so that some years after there is no more notion nor memory of colours left in their minds, than in those of people born blind. The memory of some, it is true, is very tenacious, even to a miracle:* but

* Very extraordinary stories are related of the strength of this faculty in some persons. Of Themistocles and Xerxes I have elsewhere made mention. Many modern books of easy access tell the story of Signore Magliabecchi's mnemonic powers, and in our own day

yet there seems to be a constant decay of all our ideas, even of those which are struck deepest, and in minds the most retentive; so that if they be not sometimes renewed by repeated exercise of the senses, or reflection on those kinds of objects which at first occasioned them, the print wears some instances of arithmetical memories have occurred; but I have nowhere, that I remember, met with anything half so curious as the account given by Marco Antonio Mureti, of a young Corsican, who was his auditor at Rome. The relation, which is found in his "Variæ Lectiones," (iii. 1. p. 45 et seq. in the edition of 1573,) exceeds the limits of a note, but the substance of it I may give. Mureti, hearing accidentally of the young man's powers, invited him to give proof of them before a large company assembled in the professor's chambers. "Here," says that elegant scholar, "I at once began to dictate a great number of words, Greek, Latin, or barbarous, some significant, others without meaning, so numerous, so varied, and so unconnected, that both I and my secretary, who took down what I uttered, together with every other person present, save my Corsican, were heartily fatigued. But he, fresh and unwearied, bade me still proceed. However, as it was necessary to pause somewhere, I at length ceased, at the same time assuring him I should be perfectly satisfied if I found him able to remember one half of what I had dictated. He then fixed his eyes upon the floor, while we all regarded him with anxious expectation; and having continued for some moments silent, began, and to our prodigious astonishment, repeated in order every word as it had been delivered, without pause or hesitation. Then, beginning with the last, he repeated them backwards with equal accuracy; and afterwards, starting from the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, he unerringly pursued the chain of words to its conclusion. Nay, at the request of the company, he would vary the order in any way they pleased, and still not miss a single word. Indeed, he afterwards assured Mureti that he could in that manner repeat 36,000 nouns. However, the most extraordinary part of the whole was, that he performed all this by art, having naturally possessed no more memory than ordinary men; of which he furnished undeniable proof by imparting the knowledge of it to others." Lord Bacon, who had very carefully considered this question, was persuaded, not only that there is an art of memory, but that it may be strongly affected by physical operations. He saw clearly that it depends on the association of ideas, which he terms the "binding of thoughts;" and had formed to himself certain rules to be observed in the practice of it. However, the most curious part of his mnemonic theory is that which relates to food. "The brains," he observes, "of some creatures, (when their heads are roasted,) taken in wine, are said to strengthen the memory, as the brains of hares, brains of hens, brains of deer, &c. And it seemeth to be incident to the brains of those creatures that are fearful." (Natural History, Century X. Nos. 956 and 974.) It appears to be certain that whatever food lies light upon the stomach and braces the system, will improve the memory, which is weakened by everything relaxing or oppressive.-ED.

Thus the

out, and at last there remains nothing to be seen. ideas, as well as children, of our youth, often die before us; and our minds represent to us those tombs to which we are approaching, where though the brass and marble remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced by time, and the imagery moulders away. The pictures drawn in our minds are laid in fading colours, and if not sometimes refreshed, vanish and disappear. How much the constitution of our bodies and the make of our animal spirits are concerned in this, and whether the temper of the brain makes this difference, that in some it retains the characters drawn on it like marble, in others like freestone, and in others little better than sand, I shall not here inquire; though it may seem probable that the constitution of the body does sometimes influence the memory, since we oftentimes find a disease quite strip the mind of all its ideas, and the flames of a fever in a few days calcine all those images to dust and confusion which seemed to be as lasting as if graved in marble.*

6. Constantly repeated Ideas can scarce be lost.—But concerning the ideas themselves it is easy to remark, that those that are oftenest refreshed (amongst which are those that are conveyed into the mind by more ways than one) by a frequent return of the objects or actions that produce them, fix themselves best in the memory, and remain clearest and longest there: and therefore those which are of the original qualities of bodies, viz., solidity, extension, figure, motion, and rest; and those that almost constantly affect our bodies, as heat and cold; and those which are the affections of all kinds of beings, as existence, duration, and number, which almost every object that affects our senses, every thought which employs our minds, bring along with them; these, I say, and the like ideas, are seldom quite lost, whilst the mind retains any ideas at all.

7. In Remembering, the Mind is often active.-In this * A remarkable peculiarity in the memory of some persons is that they are unable to recall circumstances at the moment desired, whereas they rush involuntarily upon their minds at other times, generally out of season. Thus an anecdote is related of a man having been present when a good joke was uttered, who saw nothing of the wit at the time, but half a year afterwards being at church, the true point of the jest appeared to him in all its brilliance, upon which he burst into a loud laugh in the midst of the sermon.-ED.