Search -
Selections From the Correspondence of R.e.h. Greyson, Esq. Ed. by the Author of 'the Eclipse of Faith'.
Selections From the Correspondence of Reh Greyson Esq Ed by the Author of 'the Eclipse of Faith' Author:Henry Rogers General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1861 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: LETTER II. To the same. Dec. 27, 1838. My dear West, There is a peculiarity about our mental constitution as respects " association," which is worthy, I think, of more notice than metaphysicians have generally bestowed upon it. They have said much, and judiciously, on the principles and laws of suggestion in general, and many of the more remarkable facts which prove them. But I do not recollect that the fact, of which I have to-day had experience most painful, yet not unpleasing, has received the attention it deserves, though it has been sometimes touched upon. Such facts seem very instructive, both as affording an indication of the beneficence with which our mental constitution is constructed, and a presumption of the indestructible vitality which probably belongs to every thought and emotion that has once been present to us, -- "being graven as with a pen of iron " on the tablets of memory " for ever." The fact to which I refer is this: -- that while, from habit, those objects become indifferent to us which in themselves are most likely to excite vivid associations with any of the great events of our past life, and which, immediately after the occurrence of such events, did so to a pitch of rapture or agony, the most trivial of such objects that happens to have lain concealed, and is suddenly discovered after a lapse of years, shall prove to us that the whole power of association is unimpaired. Unlocking the cells of memory, which had been closed perhaps for a quarter of a century, it shall set the soul deeply musing, and seem to chide it for being so stolidly forgetful in the daily presence of ...« less