Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. By Dugald Stewart. Rev. and abridged, with critical and explanatory notes, for the use of colleges and schools. By Francis Bowen ...

MIEMORY. 275
self of his past experience,' or of his former conclusions, the
occasion itself summons up every thought in his mind which the
occasion requires. Or if he is called upon to exert his powers
of invention and of discovery, the materials of both are always
at hand, and are presented to his view with such a degree of
connection and arraingement as may enable him to trace with
ease their various relations. How much invention depends upon
a patient and attentive examination of our ideas in order to discover the less obvious relations which subsist among them, I
had occasion to show at some length in a former chapter.'.Wky philosophers do not excel in conversation. - The remarks
which have been now made are sufficient to illustrate the advantages which the philosopher derives in the pursuits of science
from that sort of systematical Memory which his habits of arrangement give him. It may, however, be doubted whether
such habits be equally favorable to a talent for agreeable conversation, at least for that lively, varied conversation, which
forms the principal charm of a promiscuous society. The conversation which pleases generally, must unite the recommenda-.
tions of quickness, of ease, and of variety; and in all these three
respects, that of the philosopher is apt to be deficient. It is deficient in quickness, because his ideas are connected by relations
which occur only to an attentive and collected mind. It is deficient in ease, because these relations are not the casual and
obvious ones by which ideas are associated in ordinary memories,
but the slow discoveries of patient, and often painful, exertion.
As the ideas, too, which he associates together, are commonly of
the same class, or at least are referred to the same general principles, he is in danger of becoming tedious, by indulging himself
* The practice which literary men in general have of committing to
writing the knowledge they acquire, together with the ready access which
all ranks have now to the use of books, has a tendency to weaken the
faculty of memory, by superseding the necessity of its more extraordinary
exertions. It was on this principle that the Druids (as we are informed by
Cxsar in his Commentaries), although they knew the Greek letters, abstained from the use of writing in recording their theological and philosophical doctrines.