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V 



to the Academy. He also made some remarks on the diffi- 

 culty of this method, by reason of the complexity of the men- 

 tal operations, and the impossibility of otherwise attesting the 

 results than by the exposition of the inquirer's own thoughts, 

 and the appeal to the consciousness of others. 



The Author then went on to explain the elementary law of 

 simple apprehension, and shewed that however numerous or 

 varied might be the objects presented in any single instant to 

 the apprehension, the result must be one single idea — being a 

 whole in itself, and of which all the components must be 

 apprehended strictly as parts. From this fact he observed 

 that the entire process of memory could be deduced. For 

 this purpose he stated a case framed with a view to explain the 

 ordinary process by which incidents and circumstances are re- 

 called, by means of their association as parts or as wholes ; so 

 that either the part might recal the whole, or the whole the 

 part. 



The Author then explained how this operation might be 

 accidental, or the effect of design. The first would be the case 

 of mere passive remembrance ; the other the active recollection 

 of the will. The first would mostly be the result of the actual 

 presence of some portion of the combined ideas ; the other 

 must be arrived at by an efi"ort in which the mind succeeds in 

 placing itself in some position of relation to the required idea, 

 so as to fulfil the condition of the theory. To meet the only 

 difficulty which might be suggested by this exposition, the 

 Author pointed out, that the occasion which might require 

 such an etFort must necessarily present a first link in a chain 

 of associations, from which every subsequent step would be a 

 result similarly occurring in its order, so far as the operation 

 might happen to be rightly directed, and the materials within 

 the compass of the mind engaged in it. 



The Author observed that the various causes of memory 

 described by philosophers, are merely the circumstances at- 

 tending the process here described. He observed that every 



