f a fact, for an intimate knowledge
of which, after all, every man must refer to his own consciousness.

This power of singling out and fastening upon some one object to the
exclusion of all others,--in other words, this power of
attention--exists in almost infinite degrees in different individuals.
The degree in which it exists is the measure of a man's intellectual
stature. No man can be truly great who does not possess it to a high
degree. To command our attention is to command ourselves, to be truly
master of our own powers and resources.

The subject, then, becomes one of first importance in every kind of
either mental or moral improvement. Its vital connection with the
faculty of memory has been already suggested. Perhaps, however, this
branch of the subject should be set forth with a little more
distinctness. There are many vague, dreamy notions afloat on the subject
of memory, standing comparisons and metaphors, intended to illustrate
its uses and magnify its importance, but not declaring with any degree
of precision what it is. It is called, for instance, the "storehouse of
our ideas." The metaphor conveys undoubtedly a certain amount of truth
in regard to the subject. At the same time, there are some important
particulars, in which the comparison, for it is nothing more, conveys a
wrong impression. Experience teaches us, for instance, that
recollections, unlike other articles of store, are from the time of
their deposit undergoing a continual process of decay, and if they do
not fade entirely from the mind, it is because we occasionally bring
them anew under the review of the mind, and thus restore them to their
original freshness and vigor.

Dismissing, therefore, the metaphor, I shall, I presume, express with
sufficient accuracy the established doctrine on this subject by the
following statements: that of the great multitude of mental operations
which we experience, by far the larger part perish at the moment of
their birth; that others, to which for any reason we give, at the time
of their occurrence, some sufficient degree of attention, afterwards
recur to us, or are in some way present to our thoughts; that this
recurrence of former ideas to our thoughts is sometimes spontaneous,
without any voluntary action on our part, and sometimes the consequence
of a direct effort of the will; and lastly, that the capacity which we
have of being thus revisited by former thoughts is called memory, while
the thought