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reverie, absence, somnambulism, madness, and sleep; and by reversing the scale, the conceptions gradually lose their force, and the sensations gain it.

A similar mistake is often seen to take place between the ideas of memory and those of conception; they are in many instances confounded together. Children are often detected in falsehoods which evidently originate from this cause they have not learned to distinguish between their memory and their conception, and therefore believe they have seen and heard things which they have only fancied. In the same manner, very old men, approaching to their second infancy, are apt to confound what they have only conceived, with what they have remembered; and from this cause to become somewhat unintelligible to those who converse with them.

Nature has probably made a strong original difference between our sensations and conceptions; but whatever the original difference may be, it is considerably strengthened by habit. Every year we live, till our faculties decline, the difference becomes more and more considerable, and is, of course, much less remarkable in infancy than in manhood. This I take to be the reason why children can amuse themselves so well and so long with dolls, and talk to them as if they were alive: not that I suppose the deception is ever perfect, but that their conceptions approaching much nearer to their sensations, communicate more of the interest of real life. As the child gets older, and the difference between these two classes of ideas more wide, the wooden darling is tossed aside, because the conception has become a more languid and uninteresting representative of reality. There seems to be a regular process carried on in the mind throughout its whole existence, by which ideas of memory are converted into ideas of conception. If a poet writes two or three hundred verses, very many of the combinations of words, perhaps whole verses, will be faithful copies of what he has once remembered, and

which, divested of all the marks of their origin, have reappeared to the writer as productions of his own brain. In the same manner, in a fancy landscape, or in grounds laid out by a man of taste, many of the combinations are in all probability copies of real scenes, which the person who introduced them could once have referred to some particular spot, but have now become his own. property, from an inability to discover their former master, like domestic animals which run away into the woods, and belong to whoever can catch them.

I shall mention only one more fact respecting conception, and it is a curious one, for which no reason can be given but that such is the constitution of our nature; -I mean, the greater facility we all exhibit of conceiving the impressions of one sense better than those of another. It is, for instance, much easier to conceive any sight, than to conceive a taste, or a smell, or a feeling, or a sound. Sight is indeed so much the favourite and impressive sense, that almost the whole language of metaphysics is borrowed from it. Let any person attempt to conceive the smell or the taste of a melon,— they will find their conceptions of those sensations extremely faint; but they will without difficulty form a clear conception of its figure and colour.

To epitomise then the tedious account I have given of this class of ideas, we must remember the threefold division of ideas with which I began - ideas of the outward senses, ideas we conceive in our mind, and ideas we remember. We must recollect that when ideas of the senses are little heeded, and the conceptions of the mind acquire the force of realities, then we are said to be absent, or to be in a reverie, or we are under the influence of great passions, or asleep, or somnambulists, or madmen. There is less difference between ideas of sense and conceptions in our infancy than in our mature age, when the difference is widened by experience; and this difference again becomes less, when the effects of

experience are lost in extreme old age. We conceive some objects of sense better than others.

and appear away,

Men differ in their power of lively conception, but more in their habits of attention; but conception is in all men much strengthened by habit. Lastly, ideas of memory fade in a renovated shape, as the mere creatures of the brain. These are the faint and imperfect notices of the great operations which are passing within us: the practical inference from them is, while we give vigour, extent, and variety to our conceptions, by cultivating an ardent curiosity for knowledge, to repress their dangerous vivacity by a cool and steady appeal to the realities of life; to cherish this reproductive faculty, as the source of eloquence, poetry, and wit; but so to cherish it that we still govern it, and even exact from it a ready obedience to the natural majesty of truth. He who can thus manage his mind. has two worlds before him instead of one: he can contemplate and act; and, dispelling the vision of a rich and creative mind, can come down into the world of realities to observe with steadfastness, and to act with consistency.

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FRAGMENT OF LECTURE VI.

ON MEMORY.

accumulation of

individual and disconnected documents. He obtains all the convenience which he does obtain by the reference of individual transactions to certain general heads; and thus, by knowing only the nature of any transaction he wishes to refer to, and by seeking for it under its appropriate division, it is found with facility and despatch.

Mr. Stewart conceives (and, as it appears to me, with great justice) that the decay of memory observable in old men, proceeds as frequently from the very little interest they take in what is passing around them, as in any bodily decay by which their powers of mind are weakened: "In so far as this decay of memory which "old age brings along with it, is a necessary consequence "of a physical change in the constitution, or a necessary consequence of a diminution of sensibility, it is the part of a wise man to submit cheerfully to the lot of "his nature. But it is not unreasonable to think, that "something may be done by our own efforts, to obviate "the inconveniences which commonly result from it.

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"If individuals who, in the early part of life, have "weak memories, are sometimes able to remedy this "defect by a greater attention to arrangement in their "transactions, and to classification among their ideas, "than is necessary to the bulk of mankind, might it not "be possible, in the same way, to ward off, at least to a

"certain degree, the encroachments which time makes on this faculty? The few old men who continue in "the active scenes of life to the last moment, it has often "been remarked, complain, in general, much less of a "want of recollection than their contemporaries. This "is undoubtedly owing, partly, to the effect which the "pursuits of business must necessarily have in keeping "alive the power of attention. But it is probably owing "also to new habits of arrangement, which the mind gradually and insensibly forms from the experience of "its growing infirmities. The apparent revival of memory in old men, after a temporary decline (which "is a case that happens not unfrequently) seems to "favour this supposition.

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"One old man I have, myself, had the good fortune "to know, who, after a long, an active, and an honour"able life, having begun to feel some of the usual effects "of advanced years, has been able to find resources in "his own sagacity, against most of theinconveniences "with which they are commonly attended; and who, by "watching his gradual decline with the cool eye of an "indifferent observer, and employing his ingenuity to "retard its progress, has converted even the infirmities "of age, into a source of philosophical amusement."

I believe that this old gentleman was Dr. Reid; and he certainly is a memorable instance of a victory gained over the infirmities of age. I have heard, from a friend of his, that at the age of seventy he was as keen and eager about the then new discoveries of chemistry as if he had been just beginning his career of science. Such facts appear to me to be of the greatest importance, as they evince what may be done by a noble effort of resolution. A modern writer, who at one time made some noise, says, that it is men's own faults if they die; that dying is a mere trick, which may be avoided with a little

*

Stewart's Elements of Philosophy, chap. vi. p. 416.

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