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 ...

276 MEMonY.
in long and systematical discourses; while another, possessed of
the most inferior accomplishments, by laying his mind completely
open to impressions from without, and by accommodating continually the course of his own ideas, not only to the ideas which
are stated by his companions, but to every trifling and unexpected accident that may occur to give them a new direction,
is the life and soul of every society into which he enters. Even
the anecdotes which the philosopher has collected, however
agreeable they may be in themselves, are seldom introduced by
him into conversation with that unstudied but happy propriety
which we admire in men of the world, whose facts are not
referred to general principles, but are suggested to their recollection by the familiar topics and occurrences of ordinary life.
Nor is it the imputation of tediousness merely, to which the
systematical thinker must submit from common observers. It
is but rarely possible to explain completely, in a promiscuous
society, all the various parts of the most simple theory; and, as
nothing appears weaker or more absurd than a theory which is
partially stated, it frequently happens that men of ingenuity, by
attempting it, sink, in the vulgar apprehension, below the level
of ordinary understandings. "Theoriarum vires," says Lord
Bacon, "'in apta et se mutuo sustinente partium harnmonia et
quadam in orbem demonstratione consistunt, ideoque per partes
traditto infirmT sunt." [The excellence of theory lies in the
fitness and harmony of the parts mutually sustaining each other;
so that a theory, enunciated piecemeal, is comparatively weak.]
Peculiarities of casual eimory. - Before leaving the subject
of casual Memory, it may not be improper to add, that how
much soever it may disqualify for systematical speculation,
there is a species of loose and rambling composition to which it
is peculiarly favorable. With such performances it is often
pleasant to unbend the mind in solitude, when we are more in
the humor for conversation than for connected thinking.
Montaigne is unquestionably at the head of this class of
authors. "What, indeed, are his essays," to adopt his own account of them, "but grotesque pieces of patchwork, put together
without any certain figure, or any order, connection, or proportion, but what is accidental?" (Liv. i. chap. 27.)