130 OF VITAL MOTION. 



ceeding days and years ; or the moaning of wind in 

 the casement may bring to remembrance the chamber, 

 with all its darkness and loneliness, where we once 

 listened to such a sound, as if it were instinct with 

 supernatural meaning; and the involuntary shudder 

 proves that time has been no more able to erase this 

 passage from our history than the other. It is, in- 

 deed, the experience of every moment, that no impres- 

 sion can fall upon the senses, and no movement take 

 place in our inner being, which does not awaken 

 something that had been forgotten, and we may well 

 pause, therefore, before we conclude that the past is 

 cancelled, because it does not reveal itself in obedience 

 to the will. 



The difference in the power of recollection in 

 various people, and in the same person at different 

 times, is another argument in favour of the indeli- 

 bility of memory. We find this power to be most 

 acute in cases where, and at times when, it is most 

 in exercise. It fails under neglect, and is recovered 

 by attention. Nor do we know of any limits which 

 can be set to the perfectibility of this faculty; and 

 hence we may reason that the memory is a blank 

 in some particulars, not because it has treacherously 

 refused to receive what ought to have been recorded, 

 or that these records have become effaced, but simply 

 because we have neglected to fortify the mental vision 

 by which we read what is written. 



