God. A soul thus convinced is open to the entrance of Heaven's light; and the manifestation of Divinity is the experience he feels and waits to feel, for, There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding. Law and conscience spring not from the dust. As the truest mental abstraction is in the contemplation and enjoyment of the attributes of Deity, and in a sustained yielding up of the will through faith in God, so the soul grows into proper strength and beauty only as it is influenced by the love of truth, which is the expression of Divinity. Every one who sees that, and desires to think that he may pray, and prays that he may think in love and truth, already lives in the highest region, for love and truth are the life-breath of Heaven.

CHAPTER VII.

THE ACTION OF MIND ON THE NERVOUS ORGANISATION IN

MEMORY, ETC.

THE operation of the soul upon the body, and the incorporeal origin and end of mind, will be further rendered manifest by meditating on another endowment, namely, memory. We may dwell the rather on this faculty, as it is essential to the exercise of thought, and must precede reasoning. As Hesion said, 'the nine Muses are. the daughters of Mnemosyne;' for without memory they never could have existed, every production of human intellect having its origin in this faculty: hence the mind of the rational being is first exercised in examining objects and enjoying sensations, since the remembrance of these constitutes the groundwork of reflection and of forethought.* The infant's reason requires only familiarity with facts, and the opportunity of comparing them with each other, to become manifest and perfect. Thus it happens that savage tribes, and persons wholly without education, exhibit so many of the characteristics of childhood, because their minds remain without a sufficient acquaintance with the meaning of facts fully to call forth their reason, or induce consecutive thought.

It is not my purpose to investigate this faculty in philosophical order, but to relate certain facts in connection with its exercise, which may assist us in deducing further inferences concerning the independence and

* There are some fine thoughts on this subject in Plato's Philebus.

management of the thinking principle. Attention and association are generally deemed essential to the memory, but we find that, in many instances, we cannot detect the association; nor does it often appear that facility of recollection is in proportion to the effort to attend and to retain, but rather to the suitability of the subject to the mental character and habit of the individual, as well as the condition of the body.

It is related by Abercrombie, in his work on the 'Intellectual Powers,' that a gentleman engaged in a banking establishment made an error in his accounts, and, after an interval of several months, spent days and nights in vain endeavours to discover where the mistake lay. At length, worn out by fatigue, he went to bed, and in a dream recollected all the circumstances that gave rise to the error. He remembered that on a certain day several persons were waiting in the bank, when one individual, who was a most annoying stammerer, became so excessively impatient and noisy, that, to get rid of him, his money was paid before his turn, and the entrance of this sum was neglected, and thus arose the deficiency in the account. In this case memory produced the dream without any suggestive association, for the circumstances which reappeared were not consciously connected with the error in the mind of the dreamer. This fact is connected with those before mentioned in considering the phenomena of unconscious cerebration.' The soul, undistracted by the senses, reviewed the past, and recognised what it desired to learn, the fact it was in search of,

Our memory, as available for the common purposes of intelligence, appears to be in proportion to the interest we take in any subject. We most distinctly remember those things which relate to our chosen pursuits, or which impress us through our keenest and most engrossing affections. We recall even the sufferings of the body in connection with some state of our passions

which those sufferings excited. Hence the injurious effect of tyrannical punishments on the youthful mind. Such arbitrary inflictions, not being accompanied by a moral persuasion of propriety and kind intention, engender slavish fear and contempt. The despotic might that wounds the body merely to enforce its will, is necessarily despised; and while the body suffers under it, terror and revenge are the only passions excited; for gentleness and love alone produce repentance. The passions excited by the punishment recur on the remembrance of the pain endured; and thus a repetition of such punishment makes either a coward or a villain, or more probably both; for fear and hatred become the habit of every mind that suffers without the conviction that justice and love are one. Benevolence, when understood, is always remembered and reverenced; therefore the mercy or goodness of God is described in the Bible as the proper motive of godly fear,-There is mercy with thee, that thou mayest be feared.

The faculty of remembrance is so variously modified in different individuals, that the effort or the enjoyment which some find necessary to fix objects upon the mind, others feel to be only impediments to the process. The late Dr. Leyden, who could repeat verbatim a long Act of Parliament after having once read it, found this kind of memory an inconvenience rather than an advantage, because he could never recollect any particular point in the Act without repeating to himself all that preceded the part he required.

The memory of reasoning or thought is strong in proportion to the distinctness of apprehension and the linking together of accordant ideas. We hold most firmly what we grasp most completely. The memory of sensation is generally proportioned to the acuteness of sensation, but a rapid succession of ideas is constantly obliterating previous impressions, by stamping new ones.

Yet it appears that the impressions always remain distinct in the mind, and require only a proper condition to be perceived and read off in the order in which they were received. The manner in which the acquisition is made greatly influences the power of voluntary reproduction. Thus, under the urgency of a pressing occasion, a celebrated actor prepared himself for a new, long, and difficult part, in a surprisingly short space of time. He performed it with perfect accuracy, but the performance was no sooner over than every word was forgotten.

There are several leading phenomena referable to the head of memory. The simple latent retention of whatever impression on the senses conveys to the mind, constitutes memory, strictly speaking. Recollection is the voluntary reproduction of those impressions, and conception is that power which the painter or the poet evinces, who accurately and vividly delineates past occurrences, absent friends, and remembered scenes, with the force of present reality. The performer before mentioned doubtless possessed the memory of the part he acted, although he could never afterwards recall it. He recollected other characters well, because they were deliberately acquired. The power of memory in connection with association appears to be influenced by the direction and intensity of the will, or the degree and kind of attention required: perhaps the state of our affections has more to do with this faculty than with any other. Ready recollection, associated with self-control and a healthy brain, is of vast importance to our common intercourse, but abstract memory is probably more important to the actual education of the soul; since the memory, which is altogether latent, and concealed under one set of circumstances, becomes active and useful under another. Like certain pictures, the images and ideas in our minds appear and disappear according to the direction of the light which falls upon them, but by