An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of AssentNewman, John Henry
Religion
An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent
Newman, John Henry
Faith; Theism
I have already referred to the faculty of memory in illustration; it
will serve me also here. We can form an abstract idea of memory, and
call it one faculty, which has for its subject-matter all past facts
of our personal experience; but this is really only an illusion; for
there is no such gift of universal memory. Of course we all remember,
in a way, as we reason, in all subject-matters; but I am speaking of
remembering rightly, as I spoke of reasoning rightly. In real fact
memory, as a talent, is not one indivisible faculty, but a power of
retaining and recalling the past in this or that department of our
experience, not in any whatever. Two memories, which are both specially
retentive, may also be incommensurate. Some men can recite the canto
of a poem, or good part of a speech, after once reading it, but have
no head for dates. Others have great capacity for the vocabulary of
languages, but recollect nothing of the small occurrences of the day
or year. Others never forget any statement which they have read, and
can give volume and page, but have no memory for faces. I have known
those who could, without effort, run through the succession of days
on which Easter fell for years back; or could say where they were,
or what they were doing, on a given day, in a given year; or could
recollect accurately the Christian names of friends and strangers; or
could enumerate in exact order the names on all the shops from Hyde
Park Corner to the Bank; or had so mastered the University Calendar as
to be able to bear an examination in the academical history of any M.
A. taken at random. And I believe in most of these cases the talent,
in its exceptional character, did not extend beyond several classes of
subjects. There are a hundred memories, as there are a hundred virtues.
Virtue is one indeed in the abstract; but, in fact, gentle and kind
natures are not therefore heroic, and prudent and self-controlled minds
need not be open-handed. At the utmost such virtue is one only _in
posse_; as developed in the concrete, it takes the shape of species
which in no sense imply each other.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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