Thus the ideas, as well as children, of
our youth, often die before us: and our minds represent to us those
tombs to which we are approaching; where, though the brass and
marble remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced by time, and the
imagery moulders away. The pictures drawn in our minds are laid in
fading colours; and if not sometimes refreshed, vanish and
disappear. How much the constitution of our bodies and the make of our
animal spirits are concerned in this; and whether the temper of the
brain makes this difference, that in some it retains the characters
drawn on it like marble, in others like freestone, and in others
little better than sand, I shall not here inquire; though it may
seem probable that the constitution of the body does sometimes
influence the memory, since we oftentimes find a disease quite strip
the mind of all its ideas, and the flames of a fever in a few days
calcine all those images to dust and confusion, which seemed to be
as lasting as if graved in marble.
6. Constantly repeated ideas can scarce be lost. But concerning
the ideas themselves, it is easy to remark, that those that are
oftenest refreshed (amongst which are those that are conveyed into the
mind by more ways than one) by a frequent return of the objects or
actions that produce them, fix themselves best in the memory, and
remain clearest and longest there; and therefore those which are of
the original qualities of bodies, vis.
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