(though there be some tender ones that require a great deal) require more time to be spent in recreation than in labour.

3rd. We must beware that custom and the fashion of the world, or some other by-interest, doth not make that pass with us for recreation which is indeed labour to us, though it be not our business; as playing at cards, though no otherwise allowable but as a recreation, is so far from fitting some men for their business and giving them refreshment, that it more discomposes them than their ordinary labour.

So that God not tying us up of time, place, kind, &c., in our recreations, if we secure our main duty, which is in sincerity to do our duty in our calling as far as the frailty of our bodies or minds will allow us (beyond which we cannot think anything should be required of us), and that we design our diversions to put us in a condition to do our duty, we need not perplex ourselves with too scrupulous an inquiry into the precise bounds of them; for we cannot be supposed to be obliged to rules which we cannot know: for I doubt first whether there be any such exact proportion of recreation to our present state of body and mind, that so much is exactly enough, and whatsoever is under is too little, whatsoever is over is too much; but be it so or no, this I anı very confident of, that no one can say in his own or another man's case, that thus much is the precise dose; hitherto you must go and no further;-so that it is not only our privilege, but we are under a necessity of using a latitude, and where we can discover no determined, precise rule, it is unavoidable for us to go sometimes beyond, and sometimes to stop short of, that which is, I will not say the exact, but nearest proportion; and in such cases we can only govern ourselves by the discoverable bounds on the one hand or the other, which is only when we find that our recreation, by excess or defect, serves not to the proper end for which we are to use it, only with this caution, that we are to suspect ourselves most on that side to which we find ourselves most inclined. The cautious, devout, studious man, is to fear that he allows not himself enough; the gay, careless, and idle, that he takes too much; to which I can only add these following directions as to some particulars :

1st. That the properest time for recreating the mind is

when it feels itself weary and flagging; it may be wearied with a thing when it is not weary of it.

2nd. That the properest recreation of studious, sedentary persons, whose labour is of the thought, is bodily exercise; to those of bustling employment, sedentary recreations.

3rd. That in all bodily exercise, those in the open air are best for health.

4th. It may often be so ordered that one business may be made a recreation to another, visiting a friend to study. These are my sudden extemporary thoughts upon this subject, which will deserve to be better considered when I am in better circumstances of freedom, of thought, and leisure. Vale, March, 77.

J. L.

MEMORY-IMAGINATION-MADNESS.

MEMORY. When we revive in our minds the idea of anything that we have before observed to exist, this we call memory; viz. to recollect in our minds the idea of our father or brother. But when, from the observations we have made of divers particulars, we make a general idea to represent any species in general, as man; or else join several ideas together, which we never observed to exist together, we call it imagination. So that memory is always the picture of something, the idea whereof has existed before in our thoughts, as near the life as we can draw it; but imagination is a picture drawn in our minds without reference to a pattern.

And here it may be observed that the ideas of memory, like painting after the life, come always short, i. e. want something of the original. For whether a man would remember the dreams he had in the night, or the sights of a foregoing day, some of the traces are always left out, some of the circumstances are forgotten; and those kind of pictures, like those represented successively by several looking-glasses, are the more dim and fainter the further they are off from the original object. For the mind, endeavouring to retain only the traces of the pattern, losing by degrees a great part of them, and not having the liberty to supply any new colours or touches of its own, the picture in the memory every day fades and grows dimmer, and oftentimes is quite lost.

But the imagination, not being tied to any pattern, but

adding what colours, what ideas it pleases, to its own workmanship, making originals of its own which are usually very bright and clear in the mind, and sometimes to that degree that they make impressions as strong and as sensible as those ideas which come immediately by the senses from external objects, so that the mind takes one for the other, and its own imagination for realities.

And in this, it seems, madness consists, and not in the want of reason; for allowing their imagination to be right, one may observe that madmen usually reason right from them: and I guess that those who are about madmen, will find that they make very little use of their memory, which is to recollect particulars past with their circumstances: but having any particular idea suggested to their memory, fancy dresses it up after its own fashion, without regard to the original.

Hence also one may see how it comes to pass that those that think long and intently upon one thing, come at last to have their minds disturbed about it, and to be a little cracked as to that particular. For by repeating often with vehemence of imagination the ideas that do belong to, or may be brought in about, the same thing, a great many whereof the fancy is wont to furnish, these at length come to take so deep an impression, that they all pass for clear truths and realities, though perhaps the greater part of them have at several times been supplied only by the fancy, and are nothing but the pure effects of the imagination.

This at least is the cause of several errors and mistakes amongst men, even when it does not wholly unhinge the brains, and put all government of the thoughts into the hands of the imagination; as it sometimes happens when the imagination, being much employed, and getting the mastery about any one thing, usurps the dominion over all the other faculties of the mind in all other. But how this comes about, or what it is that gives it on such an occasion that empire,— how it comes thus to be let loose, I confess, I cannot guess. If that were once known, it would be no small advance towards the easier curing of this malady; and perhaps to that purpose it may not be amiss to observe what diet, temper, or other circumstances they are, that set the imagination on fire, and make it active and imperious. This I think, that having often recourse to one's memory, and tying down the mind strictly

to the recollecting things past precisely as they were, may be a means to check those extravagant or towering flights of the imagination. And it is good often to divert the mind from. that which it has been earnestly employed about, or which is its ordinary business, to other objects, and to make it attend to the informations of the senses and the things they offer to it. J. L. 1678.

MADNESS.

Madness seems to be nothing but a disorder in the imagination, and not in the discursive faculty; for one shall find amongst the distract, those who fancy themselves kings, &c., who discourse and reason right enough upon the suppositions and wrong fancies they have taken. And any sober man may find it in himself in twenty occasions, viz.-in a town where he has not been long resident, let him come into a street that he is pretty well acquainted with at the contrary end to what he imagined, he will find all his reasonings about it so out of order and so inconsistent with the truth, that should he enter into debate upon the situation of the houses, the turnings on the right or left hand, &c. &c., with one who knew the place perfectly, and had the right ideas which way he was going, he would seem little better than frantic.

This, I believe, most people may have observed to have happened to themselves, especially when they have been carried up and down in coaches, and perhaps may have found it sometimes difficult to set their thoughts right, and reform the mistakes of their imagination. And I have known some who, upon the wrong impressions which were at first made upon their imaginations, could never tell which was north or south in Smithfield, though they were no very ill geographers: and when by the sun and the time of the day they were convinced of the position of that place, yet they could not tell how to reconcile it to other parts of the town that were adjoining to it, but out of sight; and were very apt to relapse again, as soon as either the sun disappeared, or they were out of sight of the place, into the mistakes and confusion of their old ideas. From whence one may see of what moment it is to take care that the first impressions we settle upon our minds be conformable to the truth and to the nature of

things; or else all our meditations and discourse thereupon will be nothing but perfect raving.

ERROR.

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The foundation of error and mistake in most men lies in having obscure or confused notions of things, or by reason of their confused ideas, doubtful and obscure words; words always in their signification depending upon our ideas, being clear or obscure proportionably as our notions are so, and sometimes have little more but the sound of the word for the notion of the thing. For in the discursive faculty of the mind, I do not find that men are so apt to err; but it avails little that their syllogisms are right, if their terms be insignificant and obscure, or confused and indetermined, or that in their internal discourse deductions be regular, if their notions be wrong. Therefore, in our discourse with others, the greatest care is to be had that we be not misled or imposed on by the measure of their words, where the fallacy oftener lies than in faulty consequences.

And in considering by ourselves to take care of our notions, where a man argues right upon wrong notions or terms, he does like a madman; where he makes wrong consequences, he does like a fool: madness seeming to me to lie more in the imagination, and folly in the discourse.

SPACE.-1677.

Space, in itself, seems to be nothing but a capacity, or possibility, for extended beings or bodies to be, or exist, which we are apt to conceive infinite; for there being in nothing no resistance, we have a conception very natural and very true, that let bodies be already as far extended as you will, yet, if other new bodies should be created, they might exist where there are now no bodies: viz. a globe of a foot diameter might exist beyond the utmost superficies of all bodies now existing; and because we have by our acquaintance with bodies got the idea of the figure and distance of the superficial part of a globe of a foot diameter, we are apt to imagine the space where the globe exists to be really something, to have a real existence before and after its existence there.