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trace ; it is thus, that after the attentive perusal of a book, we have lost 

 the sensations that were produced by the different colour of the paper and 

 the letters. 



When a sensation is of short duration, our knowledge of it is so light, 

 that soon there remains no remembrance of it. It is thus, that we do not 

 perceive, every time we wink, that we pass from light to darkness, and 

 from darkness to light. If we fix our attention on this sensation, it af- 

 fects us more permanently. After occupying one's self, for a given time, 

 with a number of things, with but moderate attention to each; after read- 

 ing, for instance, a novel, full of events, each of which in its turn has in- 

 terested us, we finish it without being tired of it, and are surprised at 

 the time it has taken up.- It is because successive and light impressions 

 have effaced one another, till we have forgotten all but some of the prin- 

 cipal actions. Time ought then to appear to us to have passed rapidly, 

 for, as Locke has well said, in his Essay on the Human Understanding, 

 " We conceive the succession of times only by that of our thoughts." 



This faculty, of occupying one's self long and exclusively with the 

 same idea, of concentrating all the intellectual faculties on one object, of 

 bestowing on the contemplation of it alone, a lively and well supported 

 attention, is found in greater oiless strength in different minds; an^some 

 philosophers appear to me to have explained, very plausibly, the differ- 

 ent capacity of different minds, the various degrees of instruction of 

 which we are capable, by tbe degree of attention we are a,He to give to 

 the objects of our studies. 



W^ho, more than the man of genius, pauses on the ^iamination of a 

 single idea, considers it with more profound reflection, under more as- 

 pects and relations, bestows on it, in short, more entire attention ? 



Attention is to be considered as an act of the/will? which keeps the 

 organ to one sensation, or prepares it for that/ensation, so as to receive 

 it more deeply. To look, is to see with alien/on; to listen, is to hear at- 

 tentively: the smell, the taste, in the same /ay, are fixed upon an odour, 

 or a flavour, so as to receive from them tX e fullest impression. In all 

 these cases, the sensation may be involun/ary, but the attention by which 

 it is heightened, is an act of the will. 7"* s distinction has already been 

 well laid down with regard to the feyiing? which is only the touch ex- 

 erted under the direction of the vrlW 



According to the strength or fastness of the impression that a sensa- 

 tion, or an idea (which is but a ^nsation operated upon by the cerebral 

 organ,) has produced on the fih/es of that organ, will be the liveliness 

 and permanence of the recolle/uon. Thus, we may have reminiscence of 

 it, or recall faintly that we hAve been so affected; or memory, which is a 

 representation of the object* with some of its characteristic attributes, as 

 colour, bulk, &c. 



The pains that appear to be felt in limbs which we have lost, have not 

 their place in the part which is left; the brain is not deceived, when it 

 refers to the foot, the sufferings of which the cause is in -the stump, after 

 the amputation of the leg or thigh. I have at this moment before me, the 

 case of a woman and of a young man, whose leg and thigh I took off for 

 scrophulous caries, of many years standing, and incurable by any other 

 means. The wound, from the operation, is completely cicatrised. The 

 stump has not more sensibility than any other part covered by integu- 

 ments, .since it may be handled without pain. And yet, both at intervals, 

 and especially when the atmosphere is highly electrified, complain of 



