learn to speak chiefly by repeating the sounds which they hear, i.e. these sounds are the associated circumstances which excite to action. But if the sound does this, the idea of it must get the same power by degrees. I grant indeed, that the pictures of words in the eye, and their ideas, may be like associated circumstances, exciting to speak; and since it is necessary, according to the theory of these papers, that every semi-voluntary, voluntary, and secondarily automatic action should be excited by an associated circumstance, one may reckon words seen, and their visible ideas, amongst the number of such circumstances. But words heard, and their audible ideas, have a prior claim; and, in persons who cannot read or write, almost the only one. It confirms this, that in writing one is often apt to mis-spell in conformity with the pronunciation, as in writing hear for here; for this may proceed from the audible idea, which is the same in both cases; cannot from the visible one. Where a person mis-spells suitable to a mispronunciation, which sometimes happens, it can scarce be accounted for upon other principles. However, in writing, the associated circumstance, which excites the action of the hand, is most probably the visible idea of the word, not the audible one.
If it be objected to the supposition of these audible trains, that we ought to be conscious of them, I answer, that we are in some cases; which is an argument, that they take place in all, in a less degree; that the greater vividness of the visible trains makes us not attend to or recollect them, till the consciousness or memory be vanished; and that even visible trains do not appear as objects of consciousness and memory, till we begin to attend to them, and watch the evanescent perceptions of our minds.
The ideas of sight and hearing together are the principal storehouse of the fancy or imagination; and the imaginative arts of painting and music stand in the same relation to them respectively. Poetry comprehends both by taking in language, which is the general representative of all our ideas and affections.
As there is an artificial memory relative to the eye, by which trains of visible ideas, laid up in the memory in a certain order, are made to suggest both things themselves, and the order in which we desire to remember them; so compendious trains of technical words formed into verses may be made to suggest other words, also the numeral figures in a certain order; and by this means, to bring to view, at pleasure, the principles and materials of knowledge for meditation, inquiry, and more perfect digestion by the mind, as appears from Dr. Grey’s Memoria Technica. The visible loci make a stronger impression on the fancy, and therefore excel the audible ones in that view; but the audible ones have a much more ready and definite connexion with the things to be remembered; and therefore seem most proper, upon the whole, in most branches of literature. And as
