"I will do this or that,"
say I to myself, in that great receptacle of my mind, stored with
the images of things so many and so great, "and this or that will
follow." "O that this or that might be!" "God avert this or that!"
So speak I to myself: and when I speak, the images of all I speak of
are present, out of the same treasury of memory; nor would I speak
of any thereof, were the images wanting.
Great is this force of memory, excessive great, O my God; a large
and boundless chamber! who ever sounded the bottom thereof? yet is
this a power of mine, and belongs unto my nature; nor do I myself
comprehend all that I am. Therefore is the mind too strait to
contain itself. And where should that be, which it containeth not of
itself? Is it without it, and not within? how then doth it not
comprehend itself? A wonderful admiration surprises me, amazement
seizes me upon this. And men go abroad to admire the heights of
mountains, the mighty billows of the sea, the broad tides of rivers,
the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, and pass
themselves by; nor wonder that when I spake of all these things, I did
not see them with mine eyes, yet could not have spoken of them, unless
I then actually saw the mountains, billows, rivers, stars which I
had seen, and that ocean which I believe to be, inwardly in my memory,
and that, with the same vast spaces between, as if I saw them
abroad.
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