Of retention.

1.  Contemplation

The next faculty of the mind, whereby it makes a further progress towards knowledge, is that which I call retention; or the keeping of those simple ideas which from sensation or reflection it hath received.  This is done two ways.

First, by keeping the idea which is brought into it, for some time actually in view, which is called contemplation.

2.  Memory.

The other way of retention is, the power to revive again in our minds those ideas which, after imprinting, have disappeared, or have been as it were laid aside out of sight.  And thus we do, when we conceive heat or light, yellow or sweet,—­the object being removed.  This is memory, which is as it were the storehouse of our ideas.  For, the narrow mind of man not being capable of having many ideas under view and consideration at once, it was necessary to have a repository, to lay up those ideas which, at another time, it might have use of.  But, our ideas being nothing but actual perceptions in the mind, which cease to be anything; when there is no perception of them; this laying up of our ideas in the repository of the memory signifies no more but this,—­that the mind has a power in many cases to revive perceptions which it has once had, with this additional perception annexed to them, that it has had them before.  And in this sense it is that our ideas are said to be in our memories, when indeed they are actually nowhere;—­but only there is an ability in the mind when it will to revive them again, and as it were paint them anew on itself, though some with more, some with less difficulty; some more lively, and others more obscurely.  And thus it is, by the assistance of this faculty, that we are said to have all those ideas in our understandings which, though we do not actually contemplate yet we can bring in sight, and make appear again, and be the objects of our thoughts, without the help of those sensible qualities which first imprinted them there.

3.  Attention, Repetition, Pleasure and Pain, fix Ideas.

Attention and repetition help much to the fixing any ideas in the memory.  But those which naturally at first make the deepest and most lasting impressions, are those which are accompanied with pleasure or pain.  The great business of the senses being, to make us take notice of what hurts or advantages the body, it is wisely ordered by nature, as has been shown, that pain should accompany the reception of several ideas; which, supplying the place of consideration and reasoning in children, and acting quicker than consideration in grown men, makes both the old and young avoid painful objects with that haste which is necessary for their preservation; and in both settles in the memory a caution for the future.

4.  Ideas fade in the Memory.