These cases occur in ordinary states of the mind, but in abnormal or exalted mental conditions we find still more remarkable instances. Thus in somnambulism, dreams, hysteria, the delirium of a fever, or on the approach of death, persons have been known to recall events of their past life, long since forgotten, and unable to be recalled under ordinary circumstances.1 Persons in the delirium of a fever have been known to speak in a language which they had known in their childhood, but which for many years had passed from their memory; or to repeat with apparent accuracy discourses to which they had listened many years previously, but of which before the fever they had no recollection. They have even been known to repeat accurately long passages from books in foreign tongues, of which they never had any understanding, and had no recollection of in health, but which they had casually heard recited many years before.2 The most remark

1"The mind frequently contains whole systems of knowledge which, though in our normal state they have faded into absolute oblivion, may in certain abnormal states, as madness, febrile delirium, somnambulism, catalepsy, &c., flash out into luminous consciousness, and even throw into the shade of unconsciousness those other systems by which they had for a long period been eclipsed and even extinguished. For example, there are cases in which the extinct memory of whole languages was suddenly restored, and, what is even still more remarkable, in which the faculty was exhibited of accurately repeating in known or unknown tongues, passages which were never within the grasp of conscious memory in the normal state."-Sir W. Hamilton. "It is now fully established that a multitude of events which are so completely forgotten that no effort of the will can revive them, and that the statement of them calls up no reminiscences, may nevertheless be, so to speak, embedded in the memory, and may be reproduced with intense vividness under certain physical conditions."- Mr. E. H. Lecky.

2 A case is related by S. T. Coleridge of a young woman of four or five and twenty who could neither read nor write, and who was seized with a nervous fever, during which she continued incessantly talking Latin, Greek, and Hebrew in very pompous tones, and with

able cases, however, are those of persons who have been resuscitated from drowning or hanging, and who have reported that they had a sudden revelation of all the events of their past life presented to them with the utmost minuteness and distinctness just before consciousness left them.1 Sir Francis Beaufort, in describing his sensations when rescued from drowning, says that "every incident of his former life seemed to glance across his recollection in a retrograde succession, not in mere outline, but the picture being filled with every minute and collateral feature" forming a kind of panoramic view of his entire existence, each act of it accompanied by a sense of right and wrong". "I have also been informed," says Sir B. Brodie, "of other instances of individuals whose minds have been affected very much in the same way, when they were suddenly placed in a situation which threatened imme

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a most distinct enunciation. Sheets of her ravings were taken down from her own mouth, and at last it was found that she had been for some years servant to a Protestant pastor, who was in the habit of walking up and down a passage of his house adjoining the kitchen, and reading aloud to himself portions of his favourite authors. In the books that had belonged to him were found many passages identical with those taken down from the girl's mouth.

1 "It is affirmed of the drowning man that in the brief space of time which precedes unconsciousness, every event of his past life passes in rapid review before his eyes."-Dr. M'Cosh. "I was once told by a near relative of mine that having in her childhood fallen into a river and being on the very verge of death but for the assistance which reached her at the last critical moment, she saw in a moment her whole life clothed in its forgotten incidents, arranged before her as in a mirror, not successively, but simultaneously; and she had a faculty developed as suddenly for comprehending the whole and every part."--T. De Quincey. Dr. Abercrombie gives the case of a naval officer who fell overboard and was taken up in a state of suspended animation. "In giving an account of his feelings he stated his only distinct recollection to be, that in the act of drowning as it might correctly be called, the whole events of his past life were represented to him at the instant in the most clear and dis tinct manner."

diate death, although they were not at all deprived of their sensibility and self-possession."

There is, indeed, every reason to believe that there is no such thing with any of us as absolutely forgetting anything that has once been in the mind. "All mental activities, all acts of knowledge," says H. Schmid, as quoted by Sir W. Hamilton, "which have been once excited persist. We never wholly lose them, but they become obscure. . . . The obscure cognition may exist simply out of consciousness, so that it can be recalled by a common act of reminiscence. Again, it may be impossible to recover it by an act of voluntary recollection; but some association may revivify it enough to make it flash after a long oblivion into consciousness. Further, it may be obscured so far that it can only be resuscitated by some morbid affection of the system; or, finally, it may be absolutely lost to us in this life, and destined only for our reminiscence in the life to come."

By adopting the opinion that every thought or impression that had once been consciously before the mind is ever afterwards retained, we obtain light on many obscure mental phenomena; and especially do we draw from it the conclusion of the perfectibility of the memory to an almost unlimited extent. We cannot doubt that, could we penetrate to the lowest depths of our mental nature, we should there find traces of every impression we have received, every thought we have entertained, and every act we have done throughout our past life, each one making its influence felt in the way of building up our present knowledge, or in guiding our everyday actions; and if they exist in the mind, might it not be possible to recall most if not all of them into consciousness when we wished to do so, if

our memories or powers of recollection were what they should be ?1

Our judgment of things depends on our past experience, the particular instances of which we may be unable to recall, but which undoubtedly have their effect in determining the result at which we arrive. A merchant can test a piece of goods and declare its quality and value with the greatest accuracy from having previously examined numerous examples of the same kind, none of which may be consciously before the mind at the time, but many of which must have unconsciously aided him in coming to a decision. "What is termed 'common sense,' says J. D. Morell, "is nothing but a substratum of experiences out of which our judgments flow, while the experiences themselves are hidden away in the unconscious depths of our intellectual nature;2 and even the flow of public opinion is formed by ideas which lie tacitly in the national mind, and come into consciousness, generally, a long time after they have been really operating and shaping the course of events in human history."

3

One's present actions and thoughts depend more upon his previous thoughts and actions that he himself is aware of, or than is generally recognised. We imagine that we ordain the direction of our thoughts, but may it not be that our thoughts merely go in the direc

"There is not a single act nor a single thought of our past life," says one, "that has not had an influence in fixing our present intellectual and moral condition."

2" Man's ordinary common sense is the resultant of the unconscious co-ordination of a long succession of small experiences mostly forgotten or perhaps never brought out into distinct consciousness." -Dr. Carpenter.

"Every action is rigorously determined by the nature of the agent and the conditions under which the act takes place."-G. H. Lewes.

tion towards which they are unconsciously drawn, being swayed by the unconscious influence of past thoughts? so that in place of commanding our thoughts we are led by them, and simply follow in their wake. "I imagine," says M. Luys, "that I think of an object by a spontaneous effort of my mind; it is an illusion. I obey when I think I am commanding, merely turning in a direction towards which I am unconsciously drawn." A man fancies he is free and can act in this way or that as he pleases, but others who know him and have studied his character are usually better able to determine how the man will be likely to act under given circumstances than the man himself.1 If all the elements that go to form a man's character could be taken into account and duly estimated, we believe that his conduct in any particular case could be infallibly predicted. "Ever since men lived in society they have been in the habit of predicting the future conduct of each other from the past. .. Men are perpetually staking pleasure, and fortune, and reputation, and even life itself, on the very principle (of necessity) that they speculatively reject."-S. Bailey.

If every thought or impression that has once been consciously before the mind is ever afterwards retained, it will retain along with it all those thoughts or impressions with which at any time it has been associated. Thus the words "man," "horse," "child," will come in time to be associated with an immense number of men, horses, children, and that some rather than others come before the mind on any particular occasion will depend on a variety of circumstances, more particularly on the

1 "Les hommes se trompent en ce point qu'ils pensent être libres. Or en quoi consiste une telle opinion? En cela seulement, qu'ils ont conscience de leurs actions et ignorent les causes qui les déterminent."-Spinoza.