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 than in persons of common memories and judgments. One may perhaps conjecture, that the brain receives all dispositions to vibrate sooner in these persons, and lets them go sooner, than in others. And the last may contribute to the first: for, new impressions may take place more deeply and precisely, if there be few old ones to oppose them. The most perfect memory is that which can both receive most readily, and retain most durably. But we may suppose, that there are limits, beyond which these two different powers cannot consist with each other.

Tenthly, When a person desires to recollect a thing that has escaped him, suppose the name of a person, or visible object, he recalls the visible idea, or some other associate, again and again, by a voluntary power, the desire generally magnifying all the ideas and associations; and thus bringing in the association and idea wanted, at last. However, if the desire be great, it changes the state of the brain, and has an opposite effect; so that the desired idea does not recur, till all has subsided; perhaps not even then.

Eleventhly, All our voluntary powers are of the nature of memory; as may be easily seen from the foregoing account of it, compared with the account of the voluntary powers given in the first chapter. And it agrees remarkably with this, that, in morbid affections of the memory, the voluntary actions suffer a like change and imperfection.

Twelfthly, For the same reasons the whole powers of the soul may be referred to the memory, when taken in a large sense. Hence, though some persons may have strong memories with weak judgments, yet no man can have a strong judgment with a weak original power of retaining and remembering.

Section V
OF IMAGINATION, REVERIES, AND DREAMS.



recurrence of ideas, especially visible and audible ones, in a vivid manner, but without any regard to the order observed in past facts, is ascribed to the power of imagination or fancy. Now here we may observe, that every succeeding thought is the result either of some new impression, or of an association with the preceding. And this is the common opinion. It is impossible indeed to attend so minutely to the succession of our ideas, as to