beauty, beauty to goodness, are similitudes or correspondences in different spheres: and we see these associations in different media by the terms we use:

"a beautiful character: "sweet music : (6 a bitter feeling" "a tone of mind:" "a bright conception:" "flashes of wit."

The sympathies and relations in mind and body are natural associations: and so again is the expression of these in the language of actions, motions, or sounds; and this again developed into artificial signs; all which matter you doubtless understand as well as I. Habit is a great principle of Association, and likewise of Memory. Habit induces repetition. Associated ideas present themselves together, or follow in regular sequence. If I would recall a passage from a book, I see the page, and the place on the page where I saw it first. If I would recall an event, I place myself as nearly as possible in the position in which it occurred. We have a pre-notion that in memory we know a thing, and look for it, as it were, in a circle, and direct the attention as if there were places in memory. Phrenologists have denied a separate faculty of attention and yet there is no faculty which acts more alone, and appears to be more distinct. The dog associates sport with the sight of the gun; much so as his master. How pretty to see the flocks of pigeons at Venice, all fluttering about in the Piazza, at the sound of the bell of St. Mark's striking twelve !

as

Most of our muscular movements are uncon

scious, associated movements; and results not interrupting but often essential to the abstraction and continuance of thought. The associations in time are more interesting, and perhaps least understood. We know what strange, but quite natural associations occur in our dreams; and often when we are awake. And when we would think well, the more freely we let the mind act by its own power and laws of association, the better. Some minds do not sustain these associations in sequence well. They want the faculty of order, and they fly off to something grotesque, or away from the matter. We generally spoil the results by forcing attention; and in trying too hard to remember, we often forget the more. Newton said, that he let his mind rest upon a subject, and waited for the ideas to come. I have often tried the effects of indirect association in the mind by speaking out my thoughts as they occurred, and suggested each other, wholly without guidance; and I have been astonished at the happy sequences that would occur, and the excellence and originality of the matter, and the mode of expression, such as I cannot effect when I sit down to direct my attention and write. One of our most eloquent writers and speakers tells me he can write only by first walking about the room, and uttering his sentiments as in a speech. Again, (and I now must end,) we know how associating words with music, and sense with rhymes, assists the memory. We should never recall the number of days in each month, but for

the lines "Thirty days hath September," &c. Of course, the strength and peculiarity of our associations depend on the natural strength of particular faculties, and the exercise of these. One associates things or ideas better with form; others with colors or sounds. Some are forever associating persons in resemblance. It is quite a propensity with some to see how like one person is to another; the new comer to some familiar. Some attribute their own evil ways and thoughts to the whole world. Others more happily dwell on the good and the beautiful, and associating qualities of life with inanimate things, find

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tongues in the trees, books in the running brooks; Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.

XVII.

NOTHING.

H. M. TO H. G. A.

THANK you for the reply you have sent to some of my questions. I do not see how you can help making your letters so questions as in my last. dispose of more of them?

long, if I ask so many Will you now please to Others are rising in

my mind, while I wait for your solution of these: but I will keep them back till I have heard from you again.

XVIII.

KNOWLEDGE AND NOTIONS.-RESULTS OF EACH.

H. G. A. TO H. M.

It appears to me that men for the most part have no clear notion of the nature of science, or of the laws of action and thought; but nature in general, and the nature of man in particular, seems to them to be a species of conjuring. But the true physiologist studies the laws of matter, and the whole process of development, disentangling himself from all spiritual and metaphysical dogma, and will take into consideration all the circumstances which influence the man from childhood to the grave. He will observe the conditions of the parents before the child is born, or even conceived; and back through many generations, noting those conditions and tendencies which more particularly descend, and are impressed on the constitution, even to the third and fourth generation. He will observe the condition of the mother during the period of gestation, and the influences by which she has been surrounded; and after the child is born, he will watch the treatment of the infant, and the gradual development of its instincts and powers, and the acquiring of names to things, which Hobbes considers to be the basis of the understanding. He will note how the child is trained to good or to evil, how its passions are stimulated and directed;

and will observe how it is excited to anger and vengeance, often at a very early period, and even against inanimate objects; and whether it be pampered and trained to vanity and pride, concealment, terror, superstition, selfishness, and falsehood, what it acquires by the force of example, and what is owing to its peculiar constitution; how evil circumstances will subdue a good tendency, and how a good natural disposition will triumph over evil influences. He will not lose sight of his object when the child has become a young man at college, where we might expect to find the best education the knowledge of the age can afford. But here he will lament to observe inducements to idleness and dissipation, and vanity exhibited in an imitation of the lowest vices of society, which the youth is induced to think a fine thing, and to be a kind of wild manliness of his nature. Seldom do we find * the youth animated to solemn aspiration, and made earnest and hopeful in the pursuit of real knowledge. More frequently our future legislator will be found strutting abroad, with an immense Joinville tie, driving a stage coach, horse-racing and betting, or perhaps doing what is far worse; acknowledging no higher object in life than pleasure and ambition-pleasure in low pursuits, and ambition towards wealth and position. His studies are not of much account. The ability to make a few quotations from the classics, and a smattering of mathematics, are the chief results of a college

* Appendix T.