Intellectual Philosophy; Analytical, Synthetical and Practical (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1863 edition. Excerpt: ... of the relation of past time."--Upham's Philosophy, p. 167. t Philosophy, vol. i. p. 225. t " Conception," says Stewart, " implies no idea of time whatever."--Vol. i. p. 79. If, then, memory is made up of conception and perception, there remains no other theory of solution than the one given by him. Now I agree that conception alone implies no idea of time; but I consider memory an ultimate mental power, which, by the aid of conceptien and othe powers, dirtily recalls past events as such. REASJNS FOR CONSIDERING MEMORY AN ULTIMATE POWER. 1. Although conception and perception are in the service of memory, so also are attention, association, and other powers. All the mental powers are brought by the mind, more or less, into mutual service. The mind is itself a unit; its ultimate powers are powers of one and the same unit, to do, in various ways, certain classes of things. Memory is no more dependent on the othei mental powers than the others are on memory; and as the services performed by memory are as characteristic and important as those which we ascribe to the other mental powers, it seems to claim a rank with them. 2. The operations of memory are too multiform to be brought within the range of the restricted definition to which I object. That we first put into operation one mental power and conceive of a past event, and then put on duty another power and determine its relation to the past, and that this is the uniform and only mode in which memory operates, is a theory too narrow to tally with human experience. The theory originated among the early writers, as part of a system, and appears to have been handed along down to us, without having been seriously disputed. 3. Stewart's method of defending this theory does not...