MEMORIAL

In Diplomacy, a species of informal state paper much used in negotiation. Memorials are said to be of three cla es. 1. Memorials in the form of letters, subscribed by the writer, and speaking in the second person as addre ed to another. 2. Memorials proper, or written representations, subscribed by the writer, and with an addre , but not speaking in the second person. 3. Notes, in which there is neither subscription nor addre . Species of the first cla of memorials are, circulars from the bureau of foreign affairs sent to foreign agents; answers to the memorials of amba adors; and notes to foreign cabinets and amba adors. MEMORY (Lat. memini, I remember), is defined to be the power or capacity of having what was once present to the senses or the understanding suggested again to the mind, accompanied by a distinct consciousne of past existence. The term is also employed, though more rarely, to denote the act or operation of remembering, or the peculiar state of the mind when it exercises this faculty, in contradistinction to the faculty itself. Various opinions have been propounded by mets i physicians respecting the nature and origin of the faculty of memory. Upon this point, however, it is not our intention to enter into any details, as this question is so mixed up with that of other faculties of the mind, such as perception and a ociation, and such metaphysical questions, as personal identity, ., as to be inseparable from them; and to these heads we must refer the reader for information. We may, however, remark, that the ancient Platonists and Peripatetics ascribed the faculty of memory to the common theory of ideas; that is, of images in the brain, or in the mind, of all the objects of thought; and in this opinion they were supported, with slight modifications, by many other philosophers of antiquity. But Dr. Reid, who has examined this question with great acutene , has satisfactorily demonstrated the theory of the ancients to be very defective. The more modern theories of Locke, Hume, and other philosophers, also meet with little consideration from the same acute metaphysician, who, after exposing their fallacies, sums up in these words: — " Thus, when philosophers have piled one supposition on another, as the giants piled the mountains in order to scale the heavens, it is all to no purpose — memory remains unaccountable; and we know as little how we remember things past as how we are conscious of the present." {Reidon the Human Mind, p. 159. 185.) [s. 743]