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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
way, should it be urged that a memory impress is devoid of materiality altogether. The richness of our recollections in colour and other sensible qualities, testifies to the amount of matter in association with the soul, and proves the material basis of memory, though not in the same manner as a materialistic psychology, bent on denying or ignoring the existence of the soul, would have it. For us memory is a faculty which pertains neither to pure spirit nor to pure matter, but to a soul vitiated by the absorption of matter. For pure spirit is endowed with omniscience, which is inconsistent with limited knowledge like recollection ; and matter is unconscious, hence devoid of memory.
It is necessary to emphasize the distinction between omniscience and the productions of the lower mind to which memory appertains, especially as it has been utilized by the ancients in the building up of their mythological Pantheons. The knowing faculty in both cases, it will be seen, is the same, whether it know things directly or through the medium or instrumentality of mind; for knowledge is the very nature of the soul," and consists in the feeling of its own states, that is, the states of its own consciousness. These states of consciousness are also in their nature nothing but modifications of the soulsubstance, since spirit is pure consciousness in essence. Thus, the being who knows is one and the same; in the one case, that is, when free from the defilement of matter, he knows directly all that his own states
* See The Science of Thought' by the present writer,
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