TIME
religion, though we lament the paradoxical
follies of its best modern professors !
Myst. A truce to all controversy, then.
How shall we obtain the best from life?
It is this form of the question that should
give you a clue to my goal.
Scept. It is so difficult to determine
whether Sherlock Holmes? is dead or no that
I will take no risks. But the answer to your
query is obvious. He “eves the longest who
remembers most.
Myst. Insufficient. There are lives full of
the dreariest incident, like a farmyard novel,
or a window in Thrums, or the autobiography
of the Master of a College,* who lives ninety
years and begets sons and daughters, and
there is an end of him by-and-by, and the
world is nor richer nor poorer, scarce for an
anecdote! Addto your ‘‘ number of impres-
sions remembered” (and therefore not ex-
punged) the vividness of each impression !
Scept. As a coefficient rather. Let us
construct a scale of vividness from a to 2,
and we can erect a formula to express all
that a Man is. For example he might be:
10a + 33125 + 890¢ + 800112658e + 992/
+ ww ween +... 2,
and, if we can find the ratio ofa: 6:¢:d:
e:fi......:n, we can resolve the equa-
tion into a single term, and compare man
and man.
Myst. Y catch the idea. Fanciful as it of
course is in practice, the theory is sound to
the core. You delight me!
Scept. Not at all, not at all. Further, I
see that since the memory is a storehouse of
limited capacity, it follows that he who can
remember most is he who can group and
generalise most. How easy is it to conjugate
your Hindustani verbs! Because one rule
covers a thousand cases. !Tow impossible is
it to learn German genders! Because the
gender of each word must be committed
arbitrarily to memory.
1 A detective in sensational fiction of the
period. oo
2 The gibe is at Butler, Master of Trinity
during Crowley’s residence.
‘/yst. We then is the longest-lived, and
the wisest, and the worthiest of respect, who
can sum up all in one great generalisation?
Scept. So Spencer defines philosophy: as
the art of doing this.
Myst. But you leave out this -‘‘ vividness.”’
He is greater who generalised the data of
evolution than he who did the same thing
tor heraldry: not only because of the number
of facts covered, but because of the greater
intrinsic value and interest of each fact.
Not only, moreover, is the philosopher who
can sum up the observations ‘‘ All men are
mortal,” “ All horses are mortal,” ‘‘ All trees
are mortal,” and their like, into the one
word Anicca, as did Buddha, a wise and
great man; but Aeschylus is also wise and
great, who from this universal, but therefore
commonplace generalisation, selects and em-
phasises the particular ‘‘ Oedipus is mortal.”
Scept. Your Greek is perhaps hardly equal
to your English ; but you are perfectly right,
and I do wrong to smile. Since we agree
to abandon the mechanical device of the
astronomer, all states of consciousness are
single units, or time-marks, by which we
measure intervals. That some, no longer
than others, are more notable, just as the
striking of a clock emphasises the hours,
though the escapement maintains its rate, is
the essential fact in counting.
Myst. And what is the test of vividness?
Scept. I should say the durability of the
memory thereof.
Tyst. No doubt ; it is then of importance
to class these states of ‘high potential”
may I borrow the term?
Scept. It is a suggestive one, though I
must say I am opposed to the practice of
Petticoat Lane in philosophical literature.
The broad-minded Huxley’s aversion to
‘‘polarity” is not his least bequest to
psychologists. Of course, to begin our
classification, all states of normal waking
consciousness stand in a class above any
other
Myst. \ have known dreams
Scept. Wells says: ‘‘ There
are better