, is all that
I have seen since I came into the world. Out of this unknown store
come all the perfumes, harmonies, tastes, degrees, and mixtures of
colours; in short, all the figures that have passed through my
senses, and which they have trusted to my brain. I revive when I
please the joy I felt thirty years ago. It returns; but sometimes
it is not the same it was formerly, and appears without rejoicing
me. I remember I have been well pleased, and yet am not so while I
have that remembrance. On the other hand, I renew past sorrows and
troubles. They are present; for I distinctly perceive them such as
they were formerly, and not the least part of their bitterness and
lively sense escapes my memory. But yet they are no more the same;
they are dulled, and neither trouble nor disquiet me. I perceive
all their severity without feeling it; or, if I feel it, it is only
by representation, which turns a former smart and racking pain into
a kind of sport and diversion, for the image of past sorrows
rejoices me. It is the same with pleasures: a virtuous mind is
afflicted by the memory of its disorderly unlawful enjoyments. They
are present, for they appear with all their softest and most
flattering attendants; but they are no more themselves, and such
joys return only to make us uneasy.

SECT. XLIX. Two Wonders of the Memory and Brain.

Here, therefore, are two wonders equally incomprehensible. The
first, that my brain is a kind of book, that contains a number
almost infinite of images, and characters ranged in an order I did
not contrive, and of which chance could not be the author. For I
never had the least thought either of writing anything in my brain,
or to place in any order the images and characters I imprinted in
it. I had no other thought but only to see the objects that struck
my senses. Neither could chance make so marvellous a book: even
all the art of man is too imperfect ever to reach so high a
perfection, therefore what hand had the skill to compose it?

The second wonder I find in my brain, is to see that my mind reads
with so much ease, whatever it pleases, in that inward book; and
read even characters it does not know. I never saw the traces or
figures imprinted in my brain, and even the substance of my brain
itself, which is like the paper of that book, is altogether unknown
to me. All those numberless characters transpose themselves, and
afterwards resume their rank and place to obe