ceases to be attended with any perceptible degree of feeling; those of comparatively slight present excitement, may be long remembered, if the reminiscence of them never ceases to awaken some preceptible degree of feeling.

§ 190. Familiar objects are more easily remembered than others, in proportion to the degree of familiarity which the mind has with them. Those who are familiar with numbers, remember them most easily and perfectly, and for the longest time; those familiar with colors, remember colors; and those familiar with sounds, remember sounds. For the same reason, persons not familiar with numbers, find great difficulty in remembering them; and those not familiar with variations and diversities of sound, find great difficulty in remembering them. A man that understands an art, will remember any thing relating to it, with comparative ease; while one who is ignorant of it, will find such recollections difficult, and in many cases impossible. The same is true in respect to language. The first elements of any language are difficult to be remembered, because we are not familiar with them; and in proportion as our familiarity with them increases, this difficulty becomes diminished, till it entirely disappears.

$191. Unremitted attention to reasoning and imagining will in many cases prevent us from remembering. This occurs on the principle that the mind cannot be engaged to any great extent, in different independent exercises at the same time. When earnestly engaged in reasoning, we cannot to any great extent be engaged in successful imaginings; and when earnestly engaged in either of these exercises, we cannot be engaged to any great extent in the exercise of memory. Hence we often forget appointments and other engagements, and fail to remember every variety of objects, through excessive engagedness in study.

§ 192. Order and system in our arrangements and ideas operate favorably on the exercise of memory, by promoting the attainment of clear and distinct ideas, deliberation and permanence of ideas, and the perfection and extension of our knowledge. Artificial systems of association are of little use, and in most cases are worse than useless. The true system is that of nature and reason, which consists mainly in contemplating objects in their most important and useful relations, and in respect to their most important and useful properties and purposes; and in making these so

familiar, that ideas will readily be suggested on all appropriate occasions, in consequence of these associations.

193. The improvement of the faculty of memory is a prominent object of pursuit in every department of the prevailing systems of education. It is commenced in early childhood in the teaching of letters, words, and other simple elements of knowledge; and continues to be prosecuted in the study of languages and other departments of literature and the sciences, and in that of business during a large portion of life.

The general direction of attention determines the character of memory; and the principal varieties of character in this respect, depend upon corresponding varieties in the development of Reason and Imagination. A mathematical reasoner acquires a modification of memory adapted to mathematical reasoning; a philosophical reasoner acquires one adapted to philosophical reasoning; and a mere observer of facts and objects acquires a memory adapted to such observations.

§ 194. Children learn to remember by experience and early instruction, and are capable of making considerable proficiency in this art. Their knowledge and practice of Mnemonics is at first imperfect, but both are gradually improved by practice and instruction, till in many cases they are brought to a high degree of perfection. Some children become much greater proficients in the art of memory than others with apparently equal advantages, and acquire proportionably increased powers of recollection.

Bad memories are generally to be accounted for on the same principles as bad practice of the other arts, and admit of being improved in the same way. The faculty of memory is capable of being improved to an indefinite extent by proper exercise.

The relation of memory to knowledge generally has been distinctly recognized. Its relation to the acquisition of langunges deserves more particular notice.

§ 195. Language is one of the most important of all the objects of human knowledge, considered both as an instrument of communication and a complex symbol of thought and feeling. It is a faithful chart of most that men have thought and felt. The study of it therefore, involves that of ideas and affections, and of all the objects of ideas and affections. A knowledge of language, and a capacity to

understand the productions which it contains, implies, therefore, an extensive knowledge of things. The attainment of this knowledge requires the continual exercise of judgment, and in many cases its most powerful exercises.

The objects which words express, must be understood, in order to be associated with their appropriate words. The acquisition of this knowledge may be abstracted from the aggregate involved in the acquisition of a language, and denominated a knowledge of things. What remains, will be an association of things with words, so that they will be readily suggested by them. The first of the above elemen's belongs chiefly to judgment; the last, to memory.

A large part of the labor of learning a language is the association of words with the things which they represent, and is chiefly an exercise of memory.

§ 196. The art of learning languages depends in a nearly equal degree on judgment and memory. Judgment is exercised in determining the meaning of words and sentences, and memory in recollecting our determinations, so as to be able to apply them to future use. The faculty of language, therefore, which is recognized by phrenologists as one of the elementary powers of the human mind, is a complex faculty, involving the exercise both of judgment and memory, and is capable of being resolved into these two faculties as its elements.

We have no faculty of language different from that of judgment and memory; and the entire knowledge of any language may be resolved into judgments and recollections. The art of acquiring languages involves the two arts of judging and remembering; the first of which is exercised in determining the meanings of words, and the last, in remembering them. The art of determining the meaning of words, may be denominated interpretation, and admits of various degrees of perfection and imperfection on the part of the interpreter. No one learns a language rapidly who does not interpret it correctly and with precision. Correct and precise interpretation is to be first acquired; rapidity is the effect of practice, aided by memory.

Persons who interpret correctly and with precision, and who exercise proper attention, seldom fail of becoming good linguists, and of making rapid proficiency in acquiring this branch of knowledge.

CHAPTER XIV.

NATURE AND OFFICE OF IMAGINATION.

§ 197. Imagination is a department of the faculty of ideas, by which we form conceptions of objects independently in some degree, of grounds of inference from which they are necessarily inferred. The exercises of this faculty differ from simple judgments in relating to objects which are in some degree imaginary; or in being deduced from grounds which do not prove their objects to be altogether true. The acts of judging and imagining, however, are not altogether different from each other. From sensations we infer the presence of a man, as an act of judgment; or from any given premises we infer a conclusion. From less definite sensations we imagine the presence of a man, and from less complete premises we deduce, by imagination, the same conclusions that we before inferred. Imaginations are ideas dependent on appropriate conditions, as really as judgments that certain things are true. But in judgments we infer certain things as true, in imaginations as possible. Imaginations, therefore, are judgments which belong to the category of possibility; and imagination is that department of the faculty of judging, by which we form judgments of things as possible or impossible, not as true or false. The department of possibility and impossibility embraces a wide field for the exercise of the faculty of ideas, entirely distinct and different from the department of the real and unreal.

§ 198. The capacity of forming ideas of things as possible or impossible, is an essential department of the faculty of ideas; and is more or less exercised in all our reasonings. Without it, we could not prosecute the simplest trains of argument, by which we arrive at important truths, and all our conceptions would be meager and imperfect. Simple conceptions of things, without passing any judgment upon them, as real or unreal, are a species of imaginations. Judgment is concerned entirely with things, and cannot transcend the limits of reality; imagination is concerned with possibilities, and embraces the whole range of possibilities as its appropriate field. In imaginations and conceptions, however, we do not contemplate objects merely as possible, but

as sustaining the relations of causes and effects, and parts and wholes, to actual things; and as fulfilling all the other conditions of real objects.

It has been common to define imagination as the faculty of forming conceptions of sensible objects, and most usually of visible ones; and to restrict it to the formation of new complex wholes from elementary perceptions and judgments derived from the other faculties. But imagination is not a constructive faculty only; it is creative. It does not borrow from the other exercises of judgment, any more than any one department of the exercises of judgment borrows from others. Judgments are the conditions of its exercises; but do not furnish their elements.

§ 199. The conceptions of imagination are scarcely less numerous or less important than judgments; and really constitute the entire class of hypothetical judgments, in which we form ideas of things not as real, but as possible. They may be comprehended under the following heads:

1. Conceptions of the objects of our knowledge, which do not relate to them as real; as of men, animals, and vegetables.

2. Conceptions of inanimate objects, in which we ascribe to them the properties and actions of living beings; as of a weeping willow, a smiling landscape, and a cheerful morning.

3. Conceptions of objects of one kind, in which we attribute to them the qualities of other kinds of objects; as an iron constitution; a benighted mind, and a frozen heart.

4. Conceptions of past and future events as present; as David escapes from Saul and is finally made king in his stead.

5. Conceptions of objects which are purely imaginary but which are conformable to certain fixed principles. Of this description are ideas of most of the characters and incidents of fiction.

6. Conceptions of individual objects grouped together in different modes from those which actually occur. Of this description are many of the characters and incidents brought together in works of fiction.

§ 200. Every possible imagination is derived, in some way, from previous ideas; or from other conditions analogous to those of judgments, belonging to the category of reality. We judge an object to be present and imagine it