identification of the Ego with the universe; so that when a man says
I hope, I find, I think, he might properly say, The human race thinks
or finds or hopes. And meantime he shall be able continually to keep
sight of his biographical Ego,—I have a desk, I have an office, I am
hungry, I had an ague,—as rhetoric or offset to his grand spiritual
Ego, without impertinence, or ever confounding them.
I may well say this is divine, the continuation of the divine effort.
Alas! it seems not to be ours, to be quite independent of us. Often
there is so little affinity between the man and his works that we
think the wind must have writ them. Also its communication from one
to another follows its own law and refuses our intrusion. It is in
one, it belongs to all; yet how to impart it?
We need all our resources to live in the world which is to be used
and decorated by us. Socrates kept all his virtues as well as his
faculties well in hand. He was sincerely humble, but he utilized his
humanity chiefly as a better eyeglass to penetrate the vapors that
baffled the vision of other men.
* * * * *
The superiority of the man is in the simplicity of his thought, that
he has no obstruction, but looks straight at the pure fact, with no
color of option. Profound sincerity is the only basis of talent as of
character. The virtue of the Intellect is its own, its courage is of
its own kind, and at last it will be justified, though for the moment
it seem hostile to what it most reveres.
* * * * *
We wish to sum up the conflicting impressions by saying that all
point at last to a unity which inspires all. Our poetry, our religion
are its skirts and penumbræ. Yet the charm of life is the hints we
derive from this. They overcome us like perfumes from a far-off
shore of sweetness, and their meaning is that no tongue shall
syllable it without leave; that only itself can name it; that by
casting ourselves on it and being its voice it rushes each moment to
positive commands, creating men and methods, and ties the will of a
child to the love of the First Cause.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] 1850
MEMORY.
[Illustration: (decorative banner)]
MEMORY.
Memory is a primary and fundamental faculty, without which none other
can work; the cement, the bitumen, the matrix in which the other
faculties are imbedded; or it is the thread on which the beads of man
are strung, making the personal identity which is necessary to moral
action. Without it all life and thought were an unrelated succession.
As gravity holds matter from flying off into space, so memory gives
stability to knowledge; it is the cohesion which keeps things from
falling into a lump, or flowing in waves.
We like longevity, we like signs of riches and extent of nature in
an individual. And most of all we like a great memory. The lowest
life remembers. The sparrow, the ant, the worm, have the same memory
as we. If you bar their path, or offer them somewhat disagreeable
to their senses, they make one or two trials, and then once for all
avoid it.
Every machine must be perfect of its sort. It is essential to a
locomotive that it can reverse its movement, and run backward and
forward with equal celerity. The builder of the mind found it not
less needful that it should have retroaction, and command its past
act and deed. Perception, though it were immense and could pierce
through the universe, was not sufficient.
Memory performs the impossible for man by the strength of his divine
arms; holds together past and present, beholding both, existing in
both, abides in the flowing, and gives continuity and dignity to
human life. It holds us to our family, to our friends. Hereby a home
is possible; hereby only a new fact has value.
Opportunities of investment are useful only to those who have
capital. Any piece of knowledge I acquire to-day, a fact that falls
under my eyes, a book I read, a piece of news I hear, has a value
at this moment exactly proportioned to my skill to deal with it.
To-morrow, when I know more, I recall that piece of knowledge and use
it better.
The Past has a new value every moment to the active mind, through
the incessant purification and better method of its memory. Once it
joined its facts by color and form and sensuous relations. Some fact
that had a childish significance to your childhood and was a type
in the nursery, when riper intelligence recalls it means more and
serves you better as an illustration; and perhaps in your age has new
meaning. What was an isolated, unrelated belief or conjecture, our
later experience instructs us how to place in just connection with
other views which confirm and expand it. The old whim or perception
was an augury of a broader insight, at which we arrive later with
securer conviction. This is the companion, this the tutor, the poet,
the library, with which you travel. It does not lie, cannot be
corrupted, reports to you not what you wish but what really befel.
You say, “I can never think of some act of neglect, of selfishness,
or of passion without pain.” Well, that is as it should he. That is
the police of the Universe: the angels are set to punish you, so long
as you are capable of such crime. But in the history of character the
day comes when you are incapable of such crime. Then you suffer no
more, you look on it as heaven looks on it, with wonder at the deed,
and with applause at the pain it has cost you.
Memory is not a pocket, but a living instructor, with a prophetic
sense of the values which he guards; a guardian angel set there
within you to record your life, and by recording to animate you to
uplift it. It is a scripture written day by day from the birth of
the man; all its records full of meanings which open as he lives on,
explaining each other, explaining the world to him and expanding
their sense as he advances, until it shall become the whole law of
nature and life.
As every creature is furnished with teeth to seize and eat, and with
stomach to digest its food, so the memory is furnished with a perfect
apparatus. There is no book like the memory, none with such a good
index, and that of every kind, alphabetic, systematic, arranged
by names of persons, by colors, tastes, smells, shapes, likeness,
unlikeness, by all sorts of mysterious hooks and eyes to catch and
hold, and contrivances for giving a hint.
The memory collects and re-collects. We figure it as if the mind were
a kind of looking-glass, which being carried through the street of
time receives on its clear plate every image that passes; only with
this difference that our plate is iodized so that every image sinks
into it, and is held there. But in addition to this property it has
one more, this, namely, that of all the million images that are
imprinted, the very one we want reappears in the centre of the plate
in the moment when we want it.
We can tell much about it, but you must not ask us what it is. On
seeing a face I am aware that I have seen it before, or that I have
not seen it before. On hearing a fact told I am aware that I knew it
already. You say the first words of the old song, and I finish the
line and the stanza. But where I have them, or what becomes of them
when I am not thinking of them for months and years, that they should
lie so still, as if they did not exist, and yet so nigh that they
come on the instant when they are called for, never any man was so
sharp-sighted, or could turn himself inside out quick enough to find.
’Tis because of the believed incompatibility of the affirmative and
advancing attitude of the mind with tenacious acts of recollection
that people are often reproached with living in their memory. Late
in life we live by memory, and in our solstices or periods of
stagnation; as the starved camel in the desert lives on his humps.
Memory was called by the schoolmen _vespertina cognitio_, evening
knowledge, in distinction from the command of the future which we
have by the knowledge of causes, and which they called _matutina
cognitio_, or morning knowledge.
Am I asked whether the thoughts clothe themselves in words? I answer,
Yes, always; but they are apt to be instantly forgotten. Never was
truer fable than that of the Sibyl’s writing on leaves which the
wind scatters. The difference between men is that in one the memory
with inconceivable swiftness flies after and re-collects the flying
leaves,—flies on wing as fast as that mysterious whirlwind, and the
envious Fate is baffled.
This command of old facts, the clear beholding at will of what is
best in our experience, is our splendid privilege. “He who calls
what is vanished back again into being enjoys a bliss like that of
creating,” says Niebuhr. The memory plays a great part in settling
the intellectual rank of men. We estimate a man by how much he
remembers. A seneschal of Parnassus is Mnemosyne. This power will
alone make a man remarkable; and it is found in all good wits.
Therefore the poets represented the Muses as the daughters of Memory,
for the power exists in some marked and eminent degree in men of an
ideal determination. Quintilian reckoned it the measure of genius.
“Tantum ingenii quantum memoriæ.”
We are told that Boileau having recited to Daguesseau one day an
epistle or satire he had just been composing, Daguesseau tranquilly
told him he knew it already, and in proof set himself to recite it
from end to end. Boileau, astonished, was much distressed until he
perceived that it was only a feat of memory.
The mind disposes all its experience after its affection and to its
ruling end; one man by puns and one by cause and effect, one to
heroic benefit and one to wrath and animal desire. This is the high
difference, the quality of the association by which a man remembers.
In the minds of most men memory is nothing but a farm-book or a
pocket-diary. On such a day I paid my note; on the next day the cow
calved; on the next I cut my finger; on the next the banks suspended
payment. But another man’s memory is the history of science and art
and civility and thought; and still another deals with laws and
perceptions that are the theory of the world.
This thread or order of remembering, this classification, distributes
men, one remembering by shop-rule or interest; one by passion; one
by trifling external marks, as dress or money. And one rarely takes
an interest in how the facts really stand, in the order of cause and
effect, without self-reference. This is an intellectual man. Nature
interests him; a plant, a fish, time, space, mind, being, in their
own method and law. Napoleon was such, and that saves him.
But this mysterious power that binds our life together has its own
vagaries and interruptions. It sometimes occurs that memory has a
personality of its own and volunteers or refuses its informations at
its will, not at mine. One sometimes asks himself, Is it possible
that it is only a visitor, not a resident? Is it some old aunt who
goes in and out of the house, and occasionally recites anecdotes of
old times and persons which I recognize as having heard before, and
she being gone again I search in vain for any trace of the anecdotes?
We can help ourselves to the _modus_ of mental processes only by
coarse material experiences. A knife with a good spring, a forceps
whose lips accurately meet and match, a steel-trap, a loom, a watch,
the teeth or jaws of which fit and play perfectly, as compared with
the same tools when badly put together, describe to us the difference
between a person of quick and strong perception, like Franklin or
Swift or Webster or Richard Owen, and a heavy man who witnesses
the same facts or shares experiences like theirs. ’Tis like the
impression made by the same stamp in sand or in wax. The way in
which Burke or Sheridan or Webster or any orator surprises us is by
his always having a sharp tool that fits the present use. He has an
old story, an odd circumstance, that illustrates the point he is now
proving, and is better than an argument. The more he is heated, the
wider he sees; he seems to remember all he ever knew; thus certifying
us that he is in the habit of seeing better than other people; that
what his mind grasps it does not let go. ’Tis the bull-dog bite; you
must cut off the head to loosen the teeth.
We hate this fatal shortness of Memory, these docked men whom
we behold. We gathered up what a rolling snow-ball as we came
along,—much of it professedly for the future, as capital stock of
knowledge. Where is it now? Look behind you. I cannot see that your
train is any longer than it was in childhood. The facts of the last
two or three days or weeks are all you have with you,—the reading
of the last month’s books. Your conversation, action, your face and
manners report of no more, of no greater wealth of mind. Alas! you
have lost something for everything you have gained, and cannot grow.
Only so much iron will the loadstone draw; it gains new particles all
the way as you move it, but one falls off for every one that adheres.
As there is strength in the wild horse which is never regained when
he is once broken by training, and as there is a sound sleep of
children and of savages, profound as the hibernation of bears, which
never visits the eyes of civil gentlemen and ladies, so there is a
wild memory in children and youth which makes what is early learned
impossible to forget; and perhaps in the beginning of the world it
had most vigor. Plato deplores writing as a barbarous invention which
would weaken the memory by disuse. The Rhapsodists in Athens it seems
could recite at once any passage of Homer that was desired.
If writing weakens the memory, we may say as much and more of
printing. What is the newspaper but a sponge or invention for
oblivion? the rule being that for every fact added to the memory,
one is crowded out, and that only what the affection animates can be
remembered.
The mind has a better secret in generalization than merely adding
units to its list of facts. The reason of the short memory is shallow
thought. As deep as the thought, so great is the attraction. An act
of the understanding will marshal and concatenate a few facts; a
principle of the reason will thrill and magnetize and redistribute
the whole world.
But defect of memory is not always want of genius. By no means. It is
sometimes owing to excellence of genius. Thus men of great presence
of mind who are always equal to the occasion do not need to rely on
what they have stored for use, but can think in this moment as well
and deeply as in any past moment, and if they cannot remember the
rule they can make one. Indeed it is remarked that inventive men have
bad memories. Sir Isaac Newton was embarrassed when the conversation
turned on his discoveries and results; he could not recall them; but
if he was asked why things were so or so he could find the reason on
the spot.
A man would think twice about learning a new science or reading a new
paragraph, if he believed the magnetism was only a constant amount,
and that he lost a word or a thought for every word he gained. But
the experience is not quite so bad. In reading a foreign language,
every new word mastered is a lamp lighting up related words and so
assisting the memory. Apprehension of the whole sentence aids to fix
the precise meaning of a particular word, and what familiarity has
been acquired with the genius of the language and the writer helps in
fixing the exact meaning of the sentence. So is it with every fact
in a new science: they are mutually explaining, and each one adds
transparency to the whole mass.
The damages of forgetting are more than compensated by the large
values which new thoughts and knowledge give to what we already
know. If new impressions sometimes efface old ones, yet we steadily
gain insight; and because all nature has one law and meaning,—part
corresponding to part,—all we have known aids us continually to the
knowledge of the rest of nature. Thus, all the facts in this chest of
memory are property at interest. And who shall set a boundary to this
mounting value? Shall we not on higher stages of being remember and
understand our early history better?
They say in Architecture, “An arch never sleeps;” I say, the Past
will not sleep, it works still. With every new fact a ray of light
shoots up from the long buried years. Who can judge the new book?
He who has read many books. Who, the new assertion? He who has
heard many the like. Who, the new man? He that has seen men. The
experienced and cultivated man is lodged in a hall hung with pictures
which every new day retouches, and to which every step in the march
of the soul adds a more sublime perspective.
We learn early that there is great disparity of value between our
experiences; some thoughts perish in the using. Some days are bright
with thought and sentiment, and we live a year in a day. Yet these
best days are not always those which memory can retain. This water
once spilled cannot be gathered. There are more inventions in the
thoughts of one happy day than ages could execute, and I suppose I
speak the sense of most thoughtful men when I say, I would rather
have a perfect recollection of all I have thought and felt in a day
or a week of high activity than read all the books that have been
published in a century.
The memory is one of the compensations which Nature grants to those
who have used their days well; when age and calamity have bereaved
them of their limbs or organs, then they retreat on mental faculty
and concentrate on that. The poet, the philosopher, lamed, old,
blind, sick, yet disputing the ground inch by inch against fortune,
finds a strength against the wrecks and decays sometimes more
invulnerable than the heyday of youth and talent.
I value the praise of Memory. And how does Memory praise? By holding
fast the best. A thought takes its true rank in the memory by
surviving other thoughts that were once preferred. Plato remembered
Anaxagoras by one of his sayings. If we recall our own favorites we
shall usually find that it is for one crowning act or thought that we
hold them dear.
Have you not found memory an apotheosis or deification? The poor,
short, lone fact dies at the birth. Memory catches it up into her
heaven, and bathes it in immortal waters. Then a thousand times
over it lives and acts again, each time transfigured, ennobled. In
solitude, in darkness, we tread over again the sunny walks of youth;
confined now in populous streets you behold again the green fields,
the shadows of the gray birches; by the solitary river hear again the
joyful voices of early companions, and vibrate anew to the tenderness
and dainty music of the poetry your boyhood fed upon. At this hour
the stream is still flowing, though you hear it not; the plants are
still drinking their accustomed life and repaying it with their
beautiful forms. But you need not wander thither. It flows for you,
and they grow for you, in the returning images of former summers. In
low or bad company you fold yourself in your cloak, withdraw yourself
entirely from all the doleful circumstance, recall and surround
yourself with the best associates and the fairest hours of your life:—
“Passing sweet are the domains of tender memory.”
You may perish out of your senses, but not out of your memory or
imagination.
The memory has a fine art of sifting out the pain and keeping all the
joy. The spring days when the bluebird arrives have usually only few
hours of fine temperature, are sour and unlovely; but when late in
autumn we hear rarely a bluebird’s notes they are sweet by reminding
us of the spring. Well, it is so with other tricks of memory. Of the
most romantic fact the memory is more romantic; and this power of
sinking the pain of any experience and of recalling the saddest with
tranquillity, and even with a wise pleasure, is familiar. The memory
is as the affection. Sampson Reed says, “The true way to store the
memory is to develop the affections.” A _souvenir_ is a token of
love. _Remember me_ means, Do not cease to love me. We remember those
things which we love and those things which we hate. The memory of
all men is robust on the subject of a debt due to them, or of an
insult inflicted on them. “They can remember,” as Johnson said, “who
kicked them last.”
Every artist is alive on the subject of his art. The Persians say, “A
real singer will never forget the song he has once learned.” Michael
Angelo, after having once seen a work of any other artist, would
remember it so perfectly that if it pleased him to make use of any
portion thereof, he could do so, but in such a manner that none could
perceive it.
We remember what we understand, and we understand best what we
like; for this doubles our power of attention, and makes it our
own. Captain John Brown, of Ossawatomie, said he had in Ohio three
thousand sheep on his farm, and could tell a strange sheep in his
flock as soon as he saw its face. One of my neighbors, a grazier,
told me that he should know again every cow, ox, or steer that he
ever saw. Abel Lawton knew every horse that went up and down through
Concord to the towns in the county. And in higher examples each man’s
memory is in the line of his action.
Nature trains us on to see illusions and prodigies with no more
wonder than our toast and omelet at breakfast. Talk of memory and
cite me these fine examples of Grotius and Daguesseau, and I think
how awful is that power and what privilege and tyranny it must
confer. Then I come to a bright school-girl who remembers all she
hears, carries thousands of nursery rhymes and all the poetry in
all the readers, hymn-books, and pictorial ballads in her mind; and
’tis a mere drug. She carries it so carelessly, it seems like the
profusion of hair on the shock heads of all the village boys and
village dogs; it grows like grass. ’Tis a bushel-basket memory of all
unchosen knowledge, heaped together in a huge hamper, without method,
yet securely held, and ready to come at call; so that an old scholar,
who knows what to do with a memory, is full of wonder and pity that
this magical force should be squandered on such frippery.
He is a skilful doctor who can give me a recipe for the cure of a bad
memory. And yet we have some hints from experience on this subject.
And first, _health_. It is found that we remember best when the
head is clear, when we are thoroughly awake. When the body is in a
quiescent state in the absence of the passions, in the moderation
of food, it yields itself a willing medium to the intellect. For
the true river Lethe is the body of man, with its belly and uproar
of appetite and mountains of indigestion and bad humors and quality
of darkness. And for this reason, and observing some mysterious
continuity of mental operation during sleep or when our will is
suspended, ’tis an old rule of scholars, that which Fuller records,
“’Tis best knocking in the nail overnight and clinching it next
morning.” Only I should give extension to this rule and say Yes,
drive the nail this week and clinch it the next, and drive it this
year and clinch it the next.
But Fate also is an artist. We forget also according to beautiful
laws. Thoreau said, “Of what significance are the things you can
forget. A little thought is sexton to all the world.”
We must be severe with ourselves, and what we wish to keep we must
once thoroughly possess. Then the thing seen will no longer be what
it was, a mere sensuous object before the eye or ear, but a reminder
of its law, a possession for the intellect. Then we relieve ourselves
of all task in the matter, we put the _onus_ of being remembered
on the object, instead of on our will. We shall do as we do with
all our studies, prize the fact or the name of the person by that
predominance it takes in our mind after near acquaintance. I have
several times forgotten the name of Flamsteed, never that of Newton;
and can drop easily many poets out of the Elizabethan chronology, but
not Shakespeare.
We forget rapidly what should be forgotten. The _universal_ sense of
fables and anecdotes is marked by our tendency to forget name and
date and geography. “How in the right are children,” said Margaret
Fuller, “to forget name and date and place.”
You cannot overstate our debt to the past, but has the present no
claim? This past memory is the baggage, but where is the troop? The
divine gift is not the old but the new. The divine is the instant
life that receives and uses, the life that can well bury the old in
the omnipotency with which it makes all things new.