to them. Hume says that he
regards this as "one of the greatest and the most valuable discoveries
that has been made of late years in the republic of letters," and
endeavours to confirm it in such a manner that it shall be "put beyond
all doubt and controversy."

I may venture to express a doubt whether he has succeeded in his object;
but the subject is an abstruse one; and I must content myself with the
remark, that though Berkeley's view appears to be largely applicable to
such general ideas as are formed after language has been acquired, and
to all the more abstract sort of conceptions, yet that general ideas of
sensible objects may nevertheless be produced in the way indicated, and
may exist independently of language. In dreams, one sees houses, trees
and other objects, which are perfectly recognisable as such, but which
remind one of the actual objects as seen "out of the corner of the eye,"
or of the pictures thrown by a badly-focussed magic lantern. A man
addresses us who is like a figure seen by twilight; or we travel through
countries where every feature of the scenery is vague; the outlines of
the hills are ill-marked, and the rivers have no defined banks. They
are, in short, generic ideas of many past impressions of men, hills, and
rivers. An anatomist who occupies himself intently with the examination
of several specimens of some new kind of animal, in course of time
acquires so vivid a conception of its form and structure, that the idea
may take visible shape and become a sort of waking dream. But the figure
which thus presents itself is generic, not specific. It is no copy of
any one specimen, but, more or less, a mean of the series; and there
seems no reason to doubt that the minds of children before they learn to
speak, and of deaf mutes, are peopled with similarly generated generic
ideas of sensible objects.

It has been seen that a memory is a complex idea made up of at least two
constituents. In the first place there is the idea of an object; and
secondly, there is the idea of the relation of antecedence between that
object and some present objects.

To say that one has a recollection of a given event and to express the
belief that it happened, are two ways of giving an account of one and
the same mental fact. But the former mode of stating the fact of memory
is preferable, at present, because it certainly does not presuppose the
existence of language in the mind of the rememberer; while it may be