blended, and dependant on each
other, that it would only hazard confusion to proceed. But this subject
will be resumed.[1]

FOOTNOTE:

[1] There exists already furnished, a considerable mass of facts,
dispersed in various works, which might be advantageously collected into
a volume in order to illustrate the phenomena and laws of perception,
and more especially to display the mutual assistance they afford to each
other, and the superior knowledge which we have derived from their
united co-operation.

MEMORY.

Allow a human being to be gifted with his five senses, exquisitely
attuned for the conveyance of those perceptions, which the separate
organs and common sensory are destined to receive: let him during fifty,
or as many thousand years, scent the most delicious perfumes,--convey to
his palate the flavour of the choicest viands,--to his eyes, present the
fairest prospects in nature,--impart to his ear the sweetest music, and
regale his touch with smoothness and warmth; moreover let him be
conscious of each individual perception he receives:--what would he be
at the expiration of this period, without recollection? He would be no
more than a sheet of white paper, that had been carried round the world
to receive, through the camera obscura, its most delightful views; or
the bare walls of Westminster Abbey, after the commemoration of Handel.
Perception and consciousness, therefore, although indispensable to the
building up of mind, are by themselves inefficient and useless without
the adjunct of memory.

The writers who have treated of the human faculties, have usually and
properly bestowed an elaborate investigation to the developement of this
interesting subject: indeed, when men first began to describe the
operations of their own minds, it might be expected that they would
treat copiously of its most important function; but the nature of this
endowment has received no elucidation from the aggregate of their
labours.

The term memory has been Anglicised from the Latin Memoria; yet we
possess two other words of similar meaning, and from their derivation,
in a certain degree, explanatory of this process; namely, to REMEMBER
and RECOLLECT. Thus if an individual have seen any particular animal,
and given sufficient attention to perceive accurately its construction,
so as to possess a complete perception of the different parts or
_members_ of which it is composed; he would, in the absence of the
animal, be