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pains in the limbs which they have lost some months ago. They recog- 

 nise them, by certain characters, for those of their disease. They, like 

 all perceptions, are manifestly given in charge to the memory, which 

 reproduces them, when the cerebral organ repeats the action, once occa- 

 sioned by the impression of the disease. 



Finally, if the brain is easy of excitation, and at the same time, faith- 

 ful in preserving the impressions it has received, it will possess the 

 power of bringing up ideas with all their connected and collateral ideas; 

 of reproducing them, in some sort, by recalling the entire object, whilst 

 memory presents us with a few of its qualities only. This creative fa- 

 culty is called the imagination. If it sometimes produces monsters, it is 

 that the brain, by its power of associating, connecting, combining ideas, 

 reproduces them in an order not according to nature, gathers them un- 

 der capricious associations, and gives occasion to many erroneous judg- 

 ments. 



When the mind brings together two ideas, when it compares them, 

 and determines on their analogy, it judges. A certain number of judg- 

 ments in series, form a reasoning. To reason, then, is only to judge of 

 the relations that exist among the ideas with which the senses supply us, 

 or which are produced by Imagination. 



It is, with the faculties of the soul, as with those of the body. When 

 called into full exertion, the intellectual organ gains vigour; it languishes 

 in too long impose. If we exercise certain faculties only, they are greatly 

 developed, to :,he prejudice of the rest. It is thus, that by the study of 

 mathematics, soundness of judgment is acquired and precision of reason- 

 ing: to the extinction of imagination, which never rises to great strength 

 without injury to the judging and reasoning powers. The descriptive 

 sciences employ especially the memory, and it is seldom that they much 

 enlarge the minds of tho^e who study them exclusively. 



CLVI. Condillac has immortalized his name, by discovering, the first, 

 and by demonstrating irrefrtgibly that signs are as necessary to the for- 

 mation as to the expression of ideas; that language is not less v useful for 

 thinking than for speaking; th-ut if we could not attach the notions once 

 acquired to received signs, they would remain always unconnected and 

 incomplete; since we should hav* no power to associate and compare 

 them, and to determine their relations. It is the imperfection or the to- 

 tal want of signs, for fixing their idt^s, ttvat makes the infancy of the 

 lower animals perpetual. It is this tint makes it impossible for them 

 to transmit to another generation, or evt n to Communicate one with ano- 

 ther, the acquisitions of individual expeiience: which experience is in- 

 deed, by the same cause, restrained within /ery narrow limits, and con- 

 fined to a few simple notions, a few ideas resting merely on its wants and 

 on its powers. If tfcere were not signs to preserve ideas, and to connect 

 them, memory would be nothing, all impressions would be effaced, soon 

 after they were felt, all collections of ideas would be dissolved as soon 

 as formed, (if they could be formed at all) our ignorance would be in- 

 definitely prolonged, and we should reach old age, with a mind still in 

 its infancy. 



When we reflect on a subject, it is not directly on the ideas, but on the 

 words expressing them, that the mind operates: we should never have 

 the idea of numbers, if we had not assigned distinct names to numbers, 

 whether single or collected. Locke speaks of some Americans, who had 

 no idea of the number thousand, because the words of their language 



