clothed with associations or bare and divested of them. We say to
ourselves on revisiting a spot after a long interval: How many things have
happened since I last saw this! There is probably no impression ever
received by us of which we can venture to say that the vestiges are
altogether lost, or that we might not, under some circumstances, recover
it. A long-forgotten knowledge may be easily renewed and therefore is very
different from ignorance. Of the language learnt in childhood not a word
may be remembered, and yet, when a new beginning is made, the old habit
soon returns, the neglected organs come back into use, and the river of
speech finds out the dried-up channel.

e. 'Consciousness' is the most treacherous word which is employed in the
study of the mind, for it is used in many senses, and has rarely, if ever,
been minutely analyzed. Like memory, it accompanies all mental operations,
but not always continuously, and it exists in various degrees. It may be
imperceptible or hardly perceptible: it may be the living sense that our
thoughts, actions, sufferings, are our own. It is a kind of attention
which we pay to ourselves, and is intermittent rather than continuous. Its
sphere has been exaggerated. It is sometimes said to assure us of our
freedom; but this is an illusion: as there may be a real freedom without
consciousness of it, so there may be a consciousness of freedom without the
reality. It may be regarded as a higher degree of knowledge when we not
only know but know that we know. Consciousness is opposed to habit,
inattention, sleep, death. It may be illustrated by its derivative
conscience, which speaks to men, not only of right and wrong in the
abstract, but of right and wrong actions in reference to themselves and
their circumstances.

f. Association is another of the ever-present phenomena of the human mind.
We speak of the laws of association, but this is an expression which is