ently and recently ploughed are those that lie most open,
those which may be expected most easily to lead to results. The laws of
our memory, as we find them, therefore are incidents of our
associational constitution; and, when we are emancipated from the
flesh, it is conceivable that they may no longer continue to obtain.

We may assume, then, that recollection is a resultant of our associative
processes, these themselves in the last analysis being most probably due
to the workings of our brain.

Descending more particularly into the faculty of memory, we have to
distinguish between its potential aspect as a magazine or storehouse and
its actual aspect as recollection now of a particular event. Our memory
contains all sorts of items which we do not now recall, but which we may
recall, provided a sufficient cue be offered. Both the general retention
and the special recall are explained by association. An educated memory
depends on an organized system of associations; and its goodness depends
on two of their peculiarities: first, on the persistency of the
associations; and, second, on their number.

Let us consider each of these points in turn.

First, the persistency of the associations. This gives what may be
called the _quality of native retentiveness_ to the individual. If, as I
think we are forced to, we consider the brain to be the organic
condition by which the vestiges of our experience are associated with
each other, we may suppose that some brains are 'wax to receive and
marble to retain.' The slightest impressions made on them abide. Names,
dates, prices, anecdotes, quotations, are indelibly retained, their
several elements fixedly cohering together, so that the individual soon
becomes a walking cyclopaedia of information. All this may occur with no
philosophic tendency in the mind, no impulse to weave the materials
acquired into anything like a logical system. In the books of anecdotes,
and, more recently, in the psychology-books, we find recorded instances
of monstrosities, as we may call them, of this desultory memory; and
they are often otherwise very stupid men. It is, of course, by no means
incompatible with a philosophic mind; for mental characteristics have
infinite capacities for permutation. And, when both memory and
philosophy combine together in one person, then indeed we have the
highest sort of intellectual efficiency. Your Walter Scotts, your
Leibnitzes, your Gladstones, and your Goethes, all