to certain trades, arts, or sciences, their associations on those particular subjects, and on everything connected with them, are found to be prompt and decisive. We can but seldom detect any hesitancy or mistake within the circle where their minds have been accustomed to operate, because every thought and process have been recalled and repeated thousands of times. With almost everything they see or hear, there is a train of reflection, connecting it with their peculiar calling, and bringing it within the beaten and consecrated circle. Every hour, unless they guard against it, hastens the process which threatens to cut them off, and insulate them from the great interests of humanity, and to make them wholly professional.

"Still o'er those scenes their memory wakes,

And fondly broods with miser care;
Time but the impression stronger makes;
As streams their channels deeper wear."

§ 150. Of the secondary law of co-existent emotion.

A third secondary law is co-EXISTENT EMOTION.-It may be stated in other words as follows: The probability that our mental states will be recalled by the general laws, will in part depend on the depth of feeling, the degree of interest, which accompanied the original experience of them.

Why are bright objects more readily recalled than faint or obscure? It is not merely because they occupied more distinctly our perception, but because they more engaged our attention and interested us, the natural consequence of that greater distinctness. Why do those events in our personal history, which were accompanied with great joys and sorrows, stand out like pyramids in our past life, distinct to the eye, and immoveable in their position, while others have been swept away and cannot be found? Merely because there were joy and sorrow in the one case, and not at all, or only in a slight degree, in the other; because the sensitive part of our nature combined itself, with the intellectual; the Heart gave activity to the operations of the Understanding.

We learn from the Bible that the Jews, in their state of exile, could not forget Jerusalem, the beloved and

And why not?

How did it happen

beautiful City that, in their Captivity, they sat down by the rivers of Babylon, wept when they remembered Zion, and hung their harps on the willows? It was because Jerusalem was not only an object of thought, but of feeling. They had not only known her gates and fountains, her pleasant dwelling-places and temples, but had loved them. The Holy City was not a lifeless abstraction of the head; but a sacred and delightful image, engraven in the heart. And hence it was, that, in their solitude and sorrow, she arose before them so distinctly, "The morning star of memory."

§ 151. Original difference in the mental constitution.

The fourth and last secondary law of association is ORIGINAL DIFFERENCE IN THE MENTAL CONSTITUTION.-This Law, it will be noticed, is expressed in the most general terms; and is to be considered, therefore, as applicable both to the Intellectual and the Sensitive part of man. It requires, accordingly, to be contemplated in two distinct points of view.

The law of original difference in the mental constitution is applicable, in the FIRST place, to the Intellect, properly and distinctively so called; in other words, to the comparing, judging, and reasoning part of the soul. That there are differences in men intellectually, it is presumed will hardly be doubted, although this difference is perceptible in different degrees, and in some cases hardly perceptible at all. And these original or constitutional peculiarities reach and affect the associating principle, as well as other departments of intellectual action. The associations of the great mass of mankind (perhaps it may be entirely owing in some cases to the accidental circumstance of a want of education and intellectual developement) appear to run exclusively in the channel of Conti guity in time and place. They contemplate objects in their nearness and distance, in their familiar and outward exhibitions, without examining closely into analogies and differences, or considering them in the important relation of cause and effect. But not unfrequently we find persons whose minds are differently constructed, who exhibit a

higher order of perception. But even in these cases we sometimes detect a striking difference in the application of their intellectua. powers. One person, for instance, has from childhood exhibited a remarkable command of the relations and combinations of numbers; another exhibits, in like manner, an uncommon perception of uses, adaptations, and powers, as they are brought together, and set to work in the mechanic arts; another has the power of generalizing in an uncommon degree, and, having obtained possession of a principle in a particular case, which may appear to others perfectly and irretrievably insulated, he at once extends it to hundreds and thousands of other cases. In no one of these instances does the Associating power operate in precisely the same way, but exhibits in each a new aspect or phasis of action.

It it is perhaps unnecessary to delay here, for the purpose of confirming what has now been said by a reference to the history of individuals. A slight acquaintance with literary history will show that diversities of intellect, such as have been alluded to, and founded too in a great degree on peculiarities of the associating principle, have been frequent. How often had the husbandman seen the apple fall to the ground without even asking for the cause? But when Newton saw the fall of an apple, he not only asked for the cause, but, having conjectured it, he at once perceived its applicability to everything in like circumstances around him, to all the descending bodies on the earth's surface. And this was not all. Immediately expanding the operations of the principle which he had detected, from the surface of the earth to the stars of heaven, he showed its universality, and proved that the most distant planet is controlled by the same great law which regulates the particles of dust beneath our feet.Here was a mind, not merely great by toil, but constitutionally great and inventive; a mind which was regulated in its action, not by the law of mere contiguity in time and place, but by the more effective associating principles of Analogy, and of Cause and Effect.

§ 152. The foregoing law as applicable to the sensibilities. The law under consideration holds good, in the SECOND

place, in respect to original differences of emotion and passion, or, as it is more commonly expressed, of disposition. It will help to make us understood if we allude briefly in this part of the subject to two different classes of persons. One of the descriptions of men which we have now in view is composed of those, for such are undoubtedly to be found, who are of a pensive and melancholy turn. From their earliest life they have shown a fondness for seclusion, in order that they might either commune with the secrets of their own hearts, or hold intercourse, undisturbed by others, with whatever of impressiveness and sublimity is to be found in the works of nature. The other class are naturally of a lively and cheerful temperament. If they delight in nature, it is not in solitude, but in the company of others. While they seldom throw open their hearts for the admission of troubled thoughts, they oppose no obstacle to the entrance of the sweet beams of peace, and joy, and hope.

Now it is beyond question that the primary laws of association are influenced by the constitutional tendencies manifest in these two classes of persons; that is to say, in the minds of two individuals, the one of a cheerful, the other of a melancholy or gloomy disposition, the trains of thought will be very different. This difference is finely illustrated in those beautiful poems of Milton, L'ALLE GRO and IL PENSEROSO. L'ALLEGRO, or the cheerful man, finds pleasure and cheerfulness in every object which he beholds. The great sun puts on his amber light, the mower whets his scythe, the milkmaid sings,

"And every shepherd tells his tale

Under the hawthorn in the dale."

But the man of a melancholy disposition, IL PENSEROSO, chooses the evening for his walk, as most suitable to the temper of his mind; he listens from some lonely hillock to the distant curfew, and loves to hear the song of that "sweet bird,

Further

"That shun'st the noise of folly,

Most musical, most melancholy."

Our trains of suggested thoughts will be modified by those temporary feelings, which may be re

garded as exceptions to the more general character of our dispositions. The cheerful man is not always cheer- ' ful, nor is the melancholy man at all times equally sober and contemplative. They are known to exchange characters for short periods, sometimes in consequence of good or ill health, or of happy or adverse fortune, and sometimes for causes which cannot be easily explained. So that our mental states will be found to follow each other with a succession, varying not only with the general character of our temper and dispositions, but with the transitory emotions of the day or hour.

All the laws of association may properly be given here in a condensed view. The PRIMARY or general laws are RESEMBLANCE, CONTRAST, CONTIGUITY in time and place, and CAUSE and EFFECF. Those circumstances which are found particularly to modify and control the action of these, are termed SECONDARY laws, and are as follows: Lapse of time, Repetition or habit, Co-existent feeling and Constitutional difference in mental character.

CHAPTER VII.

MEMORY.

§ 153. Remarks on the general nature of memory.

In the further prosecution of our subject, we naturally proceed from Association to the examination of the Memory, inasmuch as the latter necessarily implies the antecedent existence of the former, and in its very nature is closely allied to it. In reference to the great question of the Origin of human Knowledge, the Memory, as has already been intimated, is to be considered a source of knowledge, rather in its connexion with other mental susceptibilities than in itself. It does not appear how we could form any abstract ideas, based upon a knowledge of objects and classes of objects, without the aid of memory; and it is well known, that its presence and action is essentially involved in all the exercises of the rea