resolution. I cannot quite go so far as this, but I am convinced, that it is for a long time in every man's power to determine whether he will be old or not. The outward marks of age we are all of us very willing to defer; forgetting that we may wear the inward bloom of youth with true dignity and grace, and be ready to learn, and eager to give pleasure to others, to the latest moment of our existence. In the same manner, memory may be wonderfully strengthened by referring single facts and observations. to one simple principle; and by these means we can either remember the principle by remembering the fact, or the fact by remembering the principle. It is very common to hear people complain that they cannot remember what they read; and the reason is very obvious, that they are perpetually admitting into their minds a string of insulated events without arranging them with any method, which may be instrumental to their reproduction. Let us take a few instances of this. The first shall be in history, and in the history of religion. I believe the rule which all wise and moderate men adopt, with respect to toleration, at present, is this-that no man ought to undergo persecution for his religious opinions, if they have not a tendency to disturb the public peace: that point secured, the rest is left to discussion only; and every man must adjust his faith as his understanding enlightens, and his conscience governs him, without the fear of human punishment. An ignorance of this wise and simple rule, and of the proper limits of human interference, is a key to all the bloody and atrocious persecutions which for three hundred years desolated Europe. Again, nobody now thinks that Providence perpetually and immediately interferes to punish vice, -- that if -- that if any man, for instance, commits a murder this night, Providence will work a miracle to discover it; but the rude idea of religion in all barbarous ages is, that Divine justice is like human justice, and that guilt is immediately overtaken by punishment. This mistake may be traced in the legal institutions of almost all barbarous people, and is the principle to which innumerable separate facts may be referred at all periods of the world. It is, of course, the origin of the corsenet, of the ordeal, of the μúopos among the Greeks, the judicial tournament in the days of chivalry, and of the trial by red water on the coast of Africa. France has fallen under the dominion of a single man, so did Rome, so have innumerable free countries. The cause in many instances, has been precisely the same that anarchy which has been produced by the licentiousness of the people, and which has rendered them an easy prey to the first ambitious man who could ingratiate himself with the army. Such examples are very trite, and what might occur to any one; I only mention them to illustrate the importance of philosophical arrangement to memory, and to show how much more likely facts are to re-appear when we want them, if we have clustered numbers of them together as illustrative of a simple principle, than if they are promiscuously scattered through the understanding without any such connecting tie. The most striking instance of it is botany. What but the most precise and rigorous classification could possibly enable a botanist to remember one thousandth part of the plants which at present he can remember with unerring certainty? A considerable degree of importance has been attached by some writers on education to the scheme of artificial memory; the general intention of which is, not to impress the thing to be remembered directly upon the memory, but to impress something easier than the original matter, which, by arbitrary association, shall recal it to the mind. Thus, the Battle of Hastings in the year life. What is the meaning of the year life? Why, I stands for 1, i for 0, ƒ for 6, and e for 6; and so we have the year 1066: and by extending this idea we may put numbers into whole lines, and convey a system of chronology in a sort of poem. Another plan is, to keep in mind a house, with the apartments of which we are minutely acquainted, and, in speaking, to arrange our subject according to a preconcerted association, between the division of the matter and the house. This was a very common custom among the speakers of antiquity, though at present it seems to be quite disused. I confess, myself, I have no very high opinion of these inventions: the expression of facts in verse, as is done in those doggrel rhymes by which we remember the days of the month, appears to be the best of them; but, in general, the remedy is much worse than the disease, and the difficulty less difficult than the assistance which is to overcome it. They accustom the mind to light and foolish associations, which have no foundation in nature; they convey an exaggerated notion of the difficulty of remembering, when such inventions are resorted to to effect it,—increase the disgust which such difficulties are apt to inspire, -weaken that confidence in the strength of memory, and the intense habits of labour founded upon that confidence, which breed up a race of great scholars, and carry men through the most intricate and extended inquiries. Upon nearly the same principles there can, I should think, be very little doubt, of the bad effects of habitually writing down those facts and events which we wish to remember; they are taken down for future consideration, and consequently receive very little present consideration. From a conviction that our knowledge can be thus easily recalled, it is never systematically arranged or deeply engraved; we atone for the passive indolence of the mind by the mechanical labour of the hands, and write a volume without remembering a line. The desirable and the useful thing is, that we should carry our knowledge about with us, as we carry our health about with us; that the one should be exhibited in the alacrity of our actions, and the other proved by the vigour of our thoughts. I would as soon call a man healthy who had a physician's prescription in his pocket, which he could take and recover from, as I would say that a man had knowledge who had no other proof of it to afford, than a pile of closely-written common-place books. Everybody knows the importance of exercising the memory; and it seems to be very useful to carry it to the extent of getting select passages by heart; — it insensibly adds to the riches and the copiousness of fancy, and communicates, perhaps, a habit of attentive reading. This practice is carried to a prodigious extent in our public schools, and furnishes men with materials for wit and imagination through the whole of their lives. At the same time this practice is not without its danger, and that a very considerable one. He who trusts to what he can produce of other men's imagination is apt to lose the flower and freshness of his own, and gradually to sacrifice the vigour and originality of his mind. There is a homely old English proverb, that an ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy; and I confess, from my own feelings, I like better a very common production which seems to be the natural growth of the soil, than that exotic luxuriance which art has cherished, and which harmonises so badly with every thing which surrounds it. But the great secret above all others for remembering is, to work the mind up to a certain pitch of enthusiasm * * * ** 88 FRAGMENT OF LECTURE VII. ON IMAGINATION. my time, but any helmet or spear. These are conceptions. If I gather together in mind various implements of war, and create out of them the picture of that armour in which I clothe the hero of my poem, this is an act of imagination: so that imagination involves conception, though it is not involved by it. their respective arts to any high degree of excellence without a considerable share of the faculty of imagination, and to them have the efforts of this faculty commonly been confined; but there appear to be various exertions of mind perfectly similar to these, and to which we never think of applying the same word. For instance, in mechanical invention, no one would ever think of saying that Mr. Bramah had displayed a great deal of imagination in his patent locks, or that there was any poetry in a steam engine; and yet the process in one and the other composition does not seem to be very dissimilar. Mr. Gray, in speaking of Mars, gives to his lance the epithet of thirsty, "On Thracia's hill the Lord of War And drop his thirsty lance at thy command." |