Collected Works (Vol. II)

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