O F

MEMORY

AND

IMAGINATION.

INTRODUCTION.

F we were engroffed by corporeal things only, and never thought of attending to what paffes in our minds, we fhould be in a great measure ignorant of the nobler part of our frame, as well as of those principles of morality and science, which are the glory of human nature, and the chief fource of human happiness. Reflection, Confcioufnefs, or Internal Senfation, is that faculty whereby we attend to our own thoughts, and to thofe various operations, which the mind performs without the aid of bodily organs. In feeing, we use the eye; in hearing, the ear; in VOL, I.

B

fmelling

fmelling and tafting, the nofe and tongue; and every part of our body is an inftrument of touch: but, when we employ ourselves in recollection, invention, or inveftigation; when we exert our consciousness in regard to the feelings, pleasant or painful, that accompany our feveral paffions and emotions; or when we meditate upon the morality of human conduct:-in thefe, and the like cafes, the mind does not feem to act by the intervention of any bodily part: nay, of thefe, and other intellectual energies, we cannot but think, that a pure spirit may be much more capable than we. Accordingly, though mankind have at all times had a perfuafion of the immortality of the foul, the refurrection of the body is a doctrine peculiar to Chriftianity, and met with no little oppofition even in the Apoftolick age: a proof, that, to mere human reafon, it is more natural to think of the foul exifting without the body, than to believe, that a re-union of these two fubftances after death is neceffary to the happiness and perfection of the former.

It is true, that the mind and the body do mutually and continually operate upon, and affect, each other. Reafon is perverted by disease; nay, by the quantity and quality of what we eat and drink. Wounds on the head have impaired both the memory and the understanding. Anger, forrow, and other violent emotions of the mind, produce fenfible and difagreeable effects on the body and chearfulness and hope, benevolence and piety, are equally conducive to the welfare of our mental and corporeal frame. Intense thinking is apt to difcompofe the head and the ftomach; and, if too long continued, may prove fatal to health, or even to reason. Extreme

anxiety

anxiety is faid to have changed the colour of the hair from black to white. Nay, it is well known, that, when certain evil humours predominate in the body, certain evil thoughts never fail to infelt the foul; and that melancholy, and other forts of madness, may fometimes be cured by phyfical applications. From thefe, and from many other facts of the fame kind, that might be mentioned, we may warrantably conclude, that, in the prefent life at least, the mind, in the exercise even of these powers of reflection or consciousness, is not independent on the body. But we know, on what particular organs the foul depends for its knowledge of found and colour, tafte and smell whereas, with what part of the body, Memory, for example, or Reafon, or Imagination, is connected, we know not: neither can we explain thefe faculties, by experiments made upon matter; or in any other way, than by attending to what paffes in our minds.

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This mode of attention feems to be one of those peculiarities that diftinguish man from the inferiour animals. Brutes fee, and hear, and fmell, and touch, and tafte, no lefs acutely, and fome of them more acutely, than we. they are affected, only or chiefly, with outward things; and feem incapable of what we call reflection or consciousness. They fometimes look, as if they were thinking; but I know not, whether we ever see them act in confequence of having deliberated: their impulfes to action are fudden, and appear for the moft part to be the effect of fome bodily fenfation. To a certain degree they are docile, and acquire experience; but all is, or feems to be, the refult of habit, cqoperating with inftinct. Give a brute his food,

the fociety of his fellows, and the means of fecurity and reft; give him, in a word, thofe external things, which the inborn propenfities of his nature require: and nothing can be wanting to his felicity: Memory will not torment him with former evils, nor imagination with those that are to come. But, in the midst of affluence and peace, and with every thing to gratify corporeal fenfe, man is often wretched: the reflections of his mind, the consciousness of what he has done, the remembrance of past, and the anticipation of future calamity; to fay nothing of the evil paffions of pride, envy, and malevolence; may poifon all the gifts of fortune, and make him fenfible, that human happiness and mifery depend upon the foul, and not upon the body; upon what we think (if I may fo exprefs myfelf), rather than upon what we feel. I will not fay, however, that all the inferiour animals are void of reflection. The more fagacious among them do give fome faint indications of fuch a power: but they probably poffefs it in no higher degree, than is barely neceffary to their prefervation. Whereas, if we confider what fort of creature man would be, if he had no faculties but the outward fenfes, we fhall be fatisfied, that from these internal powers both his dignity and his happiness arife.

Of thefe, as well as of the outward fenfes, there is confiderable variety. Memory, Imagination, Reason, Abstraction, Confcience, are faculties of the human foul, as well as Hearing, Seeing, Touching, Tafting, and Smelling: the latter employed in perceiving, by means of bodily organs, material things and their qualities; the former exerted, with no dependence on the body

that

that we can explain, in perceiving the human mind and its operations, and the ideas or thoughts that pafs in fucceffion before it.

Memory and Imagination are the objects of the prefent inquiry. In treating of them, I fhall avoid all matters of nice curiofity; and confine myself to fuch as feem to promife amufement, and practical information.

OF MEMORY.

IN

N the profecution of this fubject, I shall, first, mark the difference between Memory and Imagination fecondly, take notice of fome of the more confpicuous laws and appearances of Memory: thirdly, propofe rules for its improvement: and, fourthly, make fome obfervations on the memory of brutes: and I fhall conclude with a few inferences.