MEMORY. 85 



from the nearer margin of this same phantom -peopled 

 region that we have to take the quickening elements for 

 hourly thought and daily action the elements of all that 

 speculation, fancy, or purpose would achieve. Is it then 

 physical, or partially physical, or wholly metaphysical 

 in its character ? Are the senses, or the brain, or any 

 portion of the physical organization impressed with the 

 images or the facts to which memory enables the Con- 

 sciousness to recur ? If the senses were so impressed, it 

 is difficult to conceive that these permanent impressions 

 upon them would not impede their further action and 

 obstruct their power to receive the ever-new and succeed- 

 ing impressions to which we find them open. If the 

 brain were permantly impressed, it is equally difficult to 

 understand how the thought, or memory, should continue 

 to be, as we find it, a volition, and how it could avoid 

 becoming a fixity and a necessity as the region of the 

 past. But the images of memory do not possess the 

 character of retained or perpetuated physical impressions ; 

 they are too deficient in the exactness of their printing, too 

 wanting in the uniformity of stereotype in their repro- 

 duction by the Consciousness for that. They do not 

 always read the same way, and the aspect of a recollected 

 image or event is never quite or exactly the same. It has 

 a conjured-up and shadowy aspect, which is tremulous, 

 shifting, and uncertain in the light of thought, so that 

 even the spectra of a dream are more vivid and distinct 

 than the imagery of a recollection. And from this we 

 are led to infer that, as the figures seen in a dream ure not 

 real impressions on the eye, but fictions which simulate 

 reality, so in a much less degree are recollections the 

 results of retained and permanent physical impressions, 

 otherwise their imagery would be at least as distinct, if 

 not more vivid than the fictitious visions of sleep. 

 Everything rather tends to show that the Consciousness, 



