262 Luck, or Cunning ? 
symbols attaching to an introduction within our brain of,a 
feeble state of the thing itself. Our recollection of it is 
occasioned by a feeble continuance of this feeble state in 
our brains, becoming less feeble through the accession of 
fresh but similar vibrations from without. The molecular 
vibrations which make the thing an idea of which is con- 
veyed to our minds, put within our brain a little feeble 
emanation from the thing itself—if we come within their 
reach. This being once put there, will remain as it were 
dust, till dusted out, or till it decay, or till it receive 
accession of new vibrations. 
The vibrations from a pat of butter do, then, actually put 
butter into a man’s head. This is one of the commonest 
of expressions, and would hardly be so common if it were 
not felt to have some foundation in fact. At first the man 
does not know what feeling or complex of feelings to 
employ so as to docket the vibrations, any more than he. 
knows what word to employ so as to docket the feelings, 
or with what written characters to docket his word; but 
he gets over this, and henceforward the vibrations of the 
exterior object (that is to say, the thing) never set up 
their characteristic disturbances, or, in other words, never 
come into his head, without the associated feeling 
presenting itself as readily as word and characters 
present themselves, on the presence of the feeling. The 
more butter a man sees and handles, the more he gets 
butter on the brain—till, though he can never get anything 
like enough to be strictly called butter, it only requires the 
slightest molecular disturbance with characteristics like 
those of butter to bring up a vivid and highly sympathetic 
idea of butter in the man’s mind. 
If this view is adopted, our memory of a thing is our 
retention within the brain of a small leaven of the actual 
thing itself, or of what qué us is the thing that is remem- 
bered, and the ease with which habitual actions come to be 
performed is due to the power of the vibrations having 
