by ways
hereafter to be mentioned) any one could revive and remember, as an
idea he had formerly known; without which consciousness of a former
perception there is no remembrance; and whatever idea comes into the
mind without THAT consciousness is not remembered, or comes not out of
the memory, nor can be said to be in the mind before that appearance.
For what is not either actually in view or in the memory, is in the mind
no way at all, and is all one as if it had never been there. Suppose a
child had the use of his eyes till he knows and distinguishes colours;
but then cataracts shut the windows, and he is forty or fifty years
perfectly in the dark; and in that time perfectly loses all memory of
the ideas of colours he once had. This was the case of a blind man I
once talked with, who lost his sight by the small-pox when he was a
child, and had no more notion of colours than one born blind. I ask
whether any one can say this man had then any ideas of colours in his
mind, any more than one born blind? And I think nobody will say that
either of them had in his mind any ideas of colours at all. His
cataracts are couched, and then he has the ideas (which he remembers
not) of colours, DE NOVO, by his restored sight, conveyed to his mind,
and that without any consciousness of a former acquaintance. And these
now he can revive and call to mind in the dark. In this case all
these ideas of colours which, when out of view, can be revived with a
consciousness of a former acquaintance, being thus in the memory, are
said to be in the mind. The use I make of this is,--that whatever idea,
being not actually in view, is in the mind, is there only by being in
the memory; and if it be not in the memory, it is not in the mind; and
if it be in the memory, it cannot by the memory be brought into actual
view without a perception that it comes out of the memory; which is
this, that it had been known before, and is now remembered. If therefore
there be any innate ideas, they must be in the memory, or else nowhere
in the mind; and if they be in the memory, they can be revived without
any impression from without; and whenever they are brought into the mind
they are remembered, i. e. they bring with them a perception of their
not being wholly new to it. This being a constant and distinguishing
difference between what is, and what is not in the memory, or in the
mind;--that what is not in the memory, whenever it appears there,
appears perfectly n