volitions put forth in the
course of a piece of brilliant musical instrumentation.

As to the objection, that the theory attributes an almost inconceivable
rapidity to some of our mental operations, it may be answered, in the
first place, that there is no reason, surely, why mind should not be
capable of as rapid action as its handmaid, matter; and, in the second
place, that our ideas of time are relative, quite as much as our ideas
of space; and if the microscope has revealed a world of wonders too
minute in point of space to be observed by the naked eye, in whose
existence we yet believe with undoubting confidence, we may without
greater difficulty believe in the existence of mental acts crowded into
so narrow a point of time, so rapid and transitory in their occurrence,
as to leave no impression upon the memory.

The facts which have been adduced, then, teach clearly two things:
first, that by far the greatest part of what we do and experience and
are necessarily conscious of at the time of their occurrence,
immediately fade from the recollection, as shadows pass over a
landscape; and secondly, that in order to the recollection of any act or
object, it is necessary that the mind be fixed upon it for some
perceptible space of time and with some sensible degree of attention. It
is this indissoluble connection of the attention with memory, this
absolute dependence of the latter upon the former, which gives the
subject such far-reaching import in considering the means of
intellectual culture.

How it is that we are able to exclude all subjects but one from the
thoughts, is not very easy of explanation. It is obvious that we cannot
do it by direct volition. The very fact of our willing not to attend to
a particular object, fixes our attention upon it. That we have, however,
some power and agency in fixing our attention on one object and in
withdrawing it from another, is a fact within the knowledge and
experience of every one, whether we can explain the mode by which it is
done or not. We have the power of what the chemists call "elective
affinity;" we make our choice of some one of the various objects
claiming the attention, and fix it upon that; and it seems to be a law
of our nature, that when we thus direct the attention to one object, all
others, of themselves, and by some natural necessity, retire from the
thoughts. This is as near an approach, probably, as we shall ever make,
towards an exact verbal expression o