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becomes a new idea by no means to be forgotten, as the assertion, if not the discovery, of modern science.

It must, however, be acknowledged, that the material hypothesis of memory has been presented in so beautiful a manner as to fascinate, if not to satisfy, the understanding. We need not be surprised at the almost infinite ideas which may be interwoven into the fibrils of the brain, since microscopic observers assure us that the smallest visible organised cell of its substance is not more than the 1-8000th of an inch in diameter; it is therefore estimated that 8000 ideas may be represented on every square inch of the thinking nerve-matter; so that, considering the large extent of such matter in man, he may be supposed in this manner capable of receiving some millions of simple ideas or impressions: and why not ideas hive like bees, each kind in its peculiar cells; and why not the millions multiply for ever! Then if, as some thinkers believe, remembered ideas are fixed not in the organised cells merely, but in the molecular elements of which they are made, the points of attachment must indeed be deemed infinite. We can but enquire, however, whether things thus recollectable take up their abode in junction with the carbon, the hydrogen, the oxygen, or the phosphorus of our brains? And moreover, whether, as the elements of our brains are constantly being removed from our bodies, our thoughts and feelings are removed with them and float abroad in the world of matter, to be taken up in time into the organisation of other creatures, who shall thus in turn possess the feelings and the thoughts which once were ours? It seems vain to say, as do some advocates of this notion, that such broad methods of locating ideas do not favour materialism. Surely, if ideas exist only in the brain and spinal marrow, to die is to lose them, and with them our identity. But let us enquire, What is an idea? It is a mind-act, which cannot be but in a conscious being. Something

more than atoms must be required for the production and recognition of our mental impressions; something consenting besides brain. As images on the retina are not ideas until a man attends to them, for he does not see them while his mind is intently engaged about other things, so whatever may exist actively or passively in the brain, affects not the consciousness till the mind is in correspondence with it. Conceive a man, say Milton, using imagination, memory, judgment, day after day, until the body is no longer convenient. He chooses, observe, to 'justify the ways of God to man,' but he does not meditate on knowledge really belonging to himself, but on the play of nerve fibrils, which put him in mind of the past and present; or rather, they are his mind, for they in fact contain all his ideas, all his works, his experience, emotions, affections, thoughts. In short, these were the man himself, as the materialist must say. Now, if such be true, what was Milton when his body died? There was his end! Is there no better answer? Yes! As that immortal spirit, when present in a commodious body, saw the 'Paradise Lost' in the light which shone amidst his darkness, so that same spirit, endowed with larger love and liberty and intellect, walks with God in the Paradise Regained.' His knowledge and inwrought history did not perish in the grave. As his experience was in himself, and not in his brain, so it follows that the death and decay of his brain did not necessarily involve the destruction of either himself or his experience.

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Supposing that sensation and ideas were capable of being engraved, or cast, or daguerreotyped on the leaves of the brain, the question still returns, What perceives them there? The only possible answer is supplied in the sacred Scripture: What man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man that is in him? even so the things of God knoweth none but the Spirit of God. Thus

we are instructed that man-with reverence be it uttered -possesses as distinct a spiritual existence as God himself; and it would be as vain, in contradiction to these words, to say that the spirit of a man does not signify a man himself, as to say that the Spirit of God does not signify God himself.

The recurrence of the same ideas is only the recurrence of the same state, in that which thinks, but of course the same state in ordinary manifestation implies the return of similar relations with regard to objects of attention. To experience exactly the same state of mind, we must exactly recall the past impressions in their original order, or we must be placed again in precisely the same circumstances in regard to the brain and the senses. A case will illustrate this observation. It may be found at full in the 'Assembly Missionary Magazine.' The Reverend William Tennant, while conversing in Latin with his brother, fainted, and apparently died. His friends were invited to his funeral; but his physician, examining the body, thought he perceived signs of life; he remained in this state of suspended animation for three days longer, when his family again assembled to the funeral, and, while they were all sitting around him, he gave a heavy groan, and was gradually restored. Some time after his resuscitation, he observed his sister reading; he asked what she had in her hand. She answered 'A Bible.' He replied, 'What is a Bible?' He was found to be totally ignorant of every transaction of his past life. He was slowly taught again to read and write, and afterwards began to learn Latin under the tuition of his brother. One day, while he was reciting a lesson from Cornelius Nepos,' he suddenly felt a shock in his head. He could then speak the Latin fluently as before his illness, and his memory was in all respects completely restored. His brain was no longer so diseased or disordered in its circulation as to prevent his mind from

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returning to its former relations. He was once more thoroughly awake to this world of sense. Objects again excited their appropriate associations with recorded ideas, and he recollected what he previously knew. His will was as capable of acting on his brain as it did when acquiring Latin at first; his nervous system was again obedient. The experience of his soul belonged not to a material being; it was not written on his brain, for that had undergone many changes, and really was not the same brain as he used when in childhood he learned Latin. The mind in maturer years is associated with surrounding objects by means of a nervous system, altered in every atom from that through which early memory is stored with impressions or ideas; and yet old men expatiate in the scenes of their childhood with delight, because those mental images are again contemplated when bodily feebleness induces the mind to withdraw itself from the struggling bustle of vigorous life. Thus the tendency of the mind will show itself according to the fitness of the body for that activity which habit may have rendered congenial. Hence those who pass from a youth and manhood of bodily energy into the decrepitude of age or disease, with minds barren and unadorned either with divine or human philosophy, feel existence intolerable, instead of being still joyous with hopes in which the soul may, through the faith of true knowledge, behold her loftiest triumphs, with the bloom of immortality to crown them.

CHAPTER X.

THE CONNECTION OF MEMORY WITH TWO KINDS OF
CONSCIOUSNESS.

ALTHOUGH memory is evinced in very different degrees and under various modifications in different individuals, we must not conclude that this endowment is essentially diversified in its nature and extent, as it appears to be. Many facts tend to prove, that persons may possess large stores of recorded impressions without being aware of it. Perhaps all the images or ideas, the minutest patterns of the minutest objects perceived through the senses, are really so preserved that, under circumstances yet to come, they may each and every one be recognised in their proper connection with each other, so as to enable the corrected and unclouded reason hereafter to read the wisdom and providence of God as permanently written in the smallest circumstances of each one's experience: as there is a reason for every arrangement of atoms, a wise design in every organic form, so there is nothing which affects us too diminutive to carry instruction to the observant mind. Thus reason looks for the beginnings, and sees the order of atoms beyond the reach of microscopes. The minutiae of our history in this world of sense may in the light of a clearer firmament assist us to discern the eternal contrariety between truth and falsehood, good and evil, beauty and deformity; to trace their operation on the mind, to perceive how the humant will is rendered responsible by knowledge, and how hopes

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