It is through the medium of perception, as we have seen,—that is to say, through the medium of those sensitive capacities already so fully considered by us,—that we acquire our knowledge of the properties of external things. But if our knowledge of these properties were limited to the moment of perception, and were extinguished forever with the fading sensation from which it sprang, the acquisition of this fugitive knowledge would be of little value. We should still, indeed, be sensible of the momentary pleasure or pain; but all experience of the past, and all that confidence in the regular successions of future events, which flows from experience of the past, would of course, be excluded by universal and instant forgetfulness. In such circumstances, if the common wants of our animal nature remained, it is evident, that even life itself, in its worst and most miserable state, could not be supported; since, though oppressed with thirst and hunger, and within reach of the most delicious fruits and the most plentiful spring-water, we should still suffer without any knowledge of the means by which the suffering could be remedied. Even if, by some provision of Nature, our bodily constitution had been so framed, as to require no supply of subsistence, or if, instinctively and without reflection, we had been led on the first impulse of appetite, to repair our daily waste, and to shelter ourselves from the various causes of physical injury to which we are exposed, though our animal life might then have continued to be extended to as long a period as at present, still, if but a succession of momentary sensations, it would have been one of the lowest forms of mere animal life. It is only as capable of looking before and behind,—that is to say, as capable of those spontaneous suggestions of thought which constitute remembrance and foresight,—that we rise to the dignity of intellectual being, and that man can be said to be the image of that Purest of Intellects, who looks backward and forward, in a single glance, not on a few years only, but on all the ages of eternity. “Deum te scito esse,” says Cicero, in allusion to these powers,—“Deum te scito esse, siquidem Deus est, qui viget, qui sentit,—qui meminit, qui prævidet, qui tam regit et moderatur et movet id corpus, cui præpositus est, quam hunc mundum princeps ille Deus.”
“Were it not so, the Soul, all dead and lost,
As the fix'd stream beneath the impassive frost,[138]
Form'd for no end, and impotent to please,
Would lie inactive on the couch of ease;
And, heedless of proud fame's immortal lay,
Sleep all her dull divinity away.”[139]
Without any remembrance of pleasures formerly enjoyed, or of sorrows long past and long endured,—looking on the persons and scenes which had surrounded us from the first moment of our birth, as if they were objects altogether unknown to us,—incapable even of as much reasoning as still gleams through the dreadful stupor of the maniac,—or of conveying even that faint expression of thought with which the rudest savages, in the rudest language, are still able to hold some communication of their passions or designs;—such, but for that capacity which we are considering, would have been the deplorable picture of the whole human race. What is now revered by us as the most generous and heroic virtue, or the most profound and penetrating genius, would have been nothing more than this wretchedness and imbecility. It is the suggesting principle, the reviver of thoughts and feelings which have passed away, that gives value to all our other powers and susceptibilities, intellectual and moral—not indeed, by producing them, for, though unevolved, they would still, as latent capacities, be a part of the original constitution of our spiritual nature,—but by rousing them into action, and furnishing them with those accumulating and inexhaustible materials, which are to be the elements of future thought and the objects of future emotion. Every talent by which we excel, and every vivid feeling which animates us, derive their energy from the suggestions of this ever-active principle. We love and hate,—we desire and fear,—we use means for obtaining good, and avoiding evil,—because we remember the objects and occurrences which we have formerly observed, and because the future, in the similarity of the successions which it presents, appears to us only a prolongation of the past.
In conferring on us the capacity of these spontaneous suggestions, then, Heaven has much more than doubled our existence; for, without it, and consequently without those faculties and emotions which involve it, existence would scarcely have been desirable. The very importance of the benefits which we derive from it, however, renders us perhaps less sensible of its value; since it is so mingled, with all our knowledge, and all our plans of action, that we find it difficult to conceive a state of sentient being, of which it is not a part, and to estimate, consequently, at a just amount, the advantage which it affords. The future memory of perception seems to us almost implied in perception itself; and to speculate on that strange state of existence which would have been the condition of man, if he had been formed without the power of remembrance, and capable only of a series of sensations, has, at first, an appearance almost of absurdity and contradiction, as if we were imagining conditions which were in their nature incompatible. Yet, assuredly, if it were possible for us to consider such a subject a priori, the real cause of wonder would appear to be, not in the absence of the suggestions of memory, as in the case, imagined, but in that remembrance of which we have the happy experience. When a feeling, of the existence of which consciousness furnishes the only evidence, has passed away so completely, that not even the slightest consciousness of it remains, it would surely,—but for that experience,—be more natural to suppose that it had perished altogether, than that it should, at the distance of many years, without any renewal of it by the external cause which originally produced it, again start, as it were of itself, into being. To foresee that which has not yet begun to exist, is, in itself, scarcely more unaccountable, than to see as it were before us, what has wholly ceased to exist. The present moment is all of which we are conscious, and which can strictly be said to have a real existence, in relation to ourselves. That mode of time, which we call the past, and that other mode of time, which we call the future, are both equally unexisting. That the knowledge of either should be added to us, so as to form a part of our present consciousness, is a gift of Heaven, most beneficial to us indeed, but most mysterious, and equally, or nearly equally mysterious, whether the unexisting time, of which the knowledge is indulged to us, be the future or the past.
The advantage which we derive from the principle of suggestion, it must, however, be remarked, consists, not in its mere revival of thoughts and feelings, of which we had before been conscious, but in its revival of these in a certain order. If past objects and events had been suggested to us again, not in that series, in which they had formerly occurred, nor according to any of those relations, which human discernment has been able to discover among them, but in endless confusion and irregularity, the knowledge thus acquired, however gratifying as a source of mere variety of feeling, would avail us little, or rather would be wholly profitless, not merely in our speculative inquiries as philosophers, but in the simplest actions of common life. It is quite evident, that, in this case, we should be altogether unable to turn our experience to account, as a mode of avoiding future evil or obtaining future good; because, for this application of our knowledge, it would be requisite that events, before observed, should occur to us, at the time, when similar events might be expected. We refrain from tasting the poisonous berry, which we have known to be the occasion of death to him who tasted it; because the mere sight of it brings again before us the fatal event, which we have heard or witnessed. We satisfy our appetite with a salutary fruit, without the slightest apprehension; because its familiar appearance recals to us the refreshment, which we have repeatedly received. But, if these suggestions were reversed,—if the agreeable images of health and refreshment were all that were suggested by the poisonous plant, and pain, and convulsions, and death were the only images suggested by the sight of the grateful and nourishing fruit, there can be no doubt, to which of the two, our unfortunate preference would be given. To take the most familiar of all instances,—that of language,—which, either as written or spoken, is in such constant use, and which is so essential, not merely to our first advance, from absolute barbarism, but to the common domestic necessities, even of barbarous life, that, without it, we can scarcely conceive two individuals, however rude, to exist together,—this, it is evident, could not have been invented,—nor, if invented, could it serve any other purpose than to mislead,—if the words spoken were to have no greater chance of suggesting the meaning intended by the speaker, than any other meaning, which any other words of the language might be employed to denote. What social affection could continue for an hour, if the sight of a friend were to suggest, in intimate combination, not the kindnesses which he had conferred, and all the enjoyments of which he had been the source, but the malice, and envy, and revenge of some jealous and disappointed enemy?