26 INTRODUCTION. 



The modifications experienced by the medullary masses 

 leave impressions there which are reproduced, and thus re- 

 cal to the mind images and ideas ; this is memory, a corporeal 

 faculty that varies greatly, according to the age and health of 

 the animal. 



Similar ideas, or such as have been acquired at the same 

 time, recal each other ; this is the association of ideas. The 

 order, extent and quickness of this association constitute the 

 perfection of memory. 



Every object presents itself to the memory with all its quali- 

 ties or with all its accessary ideas. 



Intelligence has the power of separating these accessary 

 ideas of objects, and of combining those that are alike in 

 several different objects under a general idea; the object of 

 which no where really exists, nor presents itself per se this 

 is abstraction. 



Every sensation being more or less agreeable or disagree- 

 able, experience and repeated essays soon show what move- 

 ments are required to procure the one and avoid the other; 

 and with respect to this, the intelligence abstracts itself from 

 the general rules to direct the will. 



An agreeable sensation being liable to consequences that are 

 not so, and vice versa, the subsequent sensations become asso- 

 ciated with the idea of the primitive one, and modify the 

 general rules framed by intelligence this is prudence. 



From the application of these rules to general ideas, result 

 certain formulae, which are afterwards easily adapted to par- 

 ticular cases this is called reasoning. 



A lively remembrance of primitive and associated sensations, 

 and of the impressions of pleasure or pain that belong to them, 

 constitutes imagination. 



One privileged being, man, has the faculty of associating 

 his general ideas with particular images more or less arbitrary, 

 easily impressed upon the memory, and which serve to recal 

 the general ideas they represent. These associated images 

 are styled signs; their assemblage is a language. When the 

 language is composed of images that relate to the sense of 

 hearing or of sounds^ it is termed speech, and when relative 



