On the process of Memory. - 2B 
confined, that it is excited to action by a stroke, a jar, or by any sud= 
den and vivid emotion. The ear, too, has the elements of sound so 
much at command, independent of any external cause, that a slight 
disorder or irrégularity of the parts in or about the ear, will often 
produce the sensation of sound as vividly, as if an impression were 
really made upon the ear by the action of an external object. Jt i is 
well known that the other organs of sense are not near so 
ble of seeming sensations, without the actual influence of extérnal 
causes. The organs of touch may be thought an exception; but 
the sensations caused by internal pain, are very different from those 
produced by external objects, on the organs of touch. May it not 
be owing to these facts that the senses of seeing and hearing, are 
more concerned in dreams, than the other sense? 
The action of the mind, then, in recollection or memory, is the 
same as in observation or perception ; and there is, perhaps, a slight 
probability, that the mind goes farther, in some cases, and produces 
on the organs of sense, the phenomena of actual sensation. It is an 
interesting question, why the mind acts in one way, rather than 
another; or why the attention of the mind seems directed toward 
one chises, rather than another? This question is best answered by 
well known facts; that the mind acts most readily in that. Way in 
which it has before acted the oftenest and most intensely; that those 
are reproduced most readily, by the mind, whiclr have 
been before the most frequent and the most vivid; or that the atten- 
tion of the mind is most easily directed to those seeming objects, 
toward which it has been the oftenest and most earnestly directed. 
Now, all this would be well and simply called mental habit. On 
it, too, much of association is plainly dependent. The mind goes 
from one thing to another, in a particular train, simply because it has 
done so before. Philosophical association may be thought to be 
Somewhat different. But when it is analyzed, it will be found to be 
quite or very nearly the same. In going from cause to effect, from 
effect to cause, from premises to conclusions, from conclusions to 
Premises, from like to like, and from opposite to opposite, there will 
‘be usually found elements in each, which the mind has before ob- 
Served or contemplated together. Where it is otherwise, it is gener- 
ally not a case of memory, but of actual perception. 
Each of the very rapid motions, in the performance of instra- 
mental music, and in other similar exercises, has’ been ascribed toa 
distinet act of the memory, and an act of the will. Be it sos and 
