Impressions of memory may not perhaps appear consistent with imagination, but, on the principle I have advanced, it will be found that, although the idea excited by memory be consistent, these ideas may, by fanciful association, become imagination; appearing, on superficial view, to illustrate the doctrine of innate idea. But is this doctrine proved? We may seem to imagine that which we do not remember, _as a whole_; but, as a curve is made up of right lines,—as a mass is composed of an infinity of atoms,—so may it follow, that what is termed “innate idea,” if minutely divided, may be _proved_ to arise from memory; made up of things, however minute, which we have _seen or heard of_. Analysis may thus unravel many a “strange mysterious dream.” IDA. I have ever believed that there were incidents recorded, which left no doubt of the truth of innate idealism. Dr. Beattie has observed: “Men born blind, or who have lost all remembrance of light and colours, are as capable of invention, and dream as frequently, as those who see.” EV. These, fair lady, are surely very imperfect data. If a person loses remembrance of _individual_ colour, he does not lose the power of comparing or of judging _variety_ of colour. And, again, although he may be congenitally blind, yet if there be any _other sense_ but sight, through which the mind can perceive or receive external impression, the objection must fail. There are very strange communities of the senses, which you may smile at, yet are they perfectly true. Dr. Blacklock, (who was very early in life struck blind,) expressed his ideas of colour, by referring to a peculiar sound, the two being as it were _synonymous_ to him. And he fancied also, in his dreaming, that he was connected to other bodies by myriads of threads or rays of feeling. I may assure you, too, that on the loss of any one sense, the subsequent dreams, after a lapse of time, will not be referred to _that_ sense. Dr. Darwin will supply you with very illustrative instances of this; from which you will learn, that after blindness had afflicted certain persons, they never dreamed that they _saw_ objects in their sleep: and a deaf gentleman, who had talked with his fingers for thirty years, invariably dreamed also of _finger-speaking_, and never alluded to any dreaming of friends having _orally_ conversed with him. ASTR. I believe that a black colour was disagreeable to Cheselden’s blind boy, _from the moment he saw it_. EV. Because, from certain laws of refraction, the effect was instantly _painful_ to his eye. ASTR. I remember, Sir Walter Scott, in his “Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft,” informs us that “those experienced in the education of the deaf and dumb find that their pupils, even _cut off from all instruction_ by ordinary means, have been able to form, out of their own _unassisted_ conjectures, some ideas of the existence of a Deity, and of the distinction between the soul and body.”