SECT.  XLVIII.  The Sovereignty of the Soul over the Body principally appears in the Images imprinted in the Brain.

It is certain we cannot sufficiently admire either the absolute power of the soul over corporeal organs which she knows not, or the continual use it makes of them without discerning them.  That sovereignty principally appears with respect to the images imprinted in our brain.  I know all the bodies of the universe that have made any impression on my senses for a great many years past.  I have distinct images of them that represent them to me, insomuch that I believe I see them even when they exist no more.  My brain is like a closet full of pictures, which should move and set themselves in order at the master’s pleasure.  Painters, with all their art and skill, never attain but an imperfect likeness; whereas the pictures I have in my head are so faithful, that it is by consulting them I perceive all the defects of those made by painters, and correct them within myself.  Now, do these images, more like their original than the masterpieces of the art of painting, imprint themselves in my head without any art?  Is my brain a book, all the characters of which have ranged themselves of their own accord?  If there be any art in the case, it does not proceed from me.  For I find within me that collection of images without having ever so much as thought either to imprint them, or set them in order.  Moreover, all these images either appear or retire as I please, without any confusion.  I call them back, and they return; I dismiss them, and they sink I know not where.  They either assemble or separate, as I please.  But I neither know where they lie, nor what they are.  Nevertheless I find them always ready.  The agitation of so many images, old and new, that revive, join, or separate, never disturbs a certain order that is amongst them.  If some of them do not appear at the first summons, at least I am certain they are not far off.  They may lurk in some deep corner, but I am not totally ignorant of them as I am of things I never knew; for, on the contrary, I know confusedly what I look for.  If any other image offers itself in the room of that I called for, I immediately dismiss it, telling it, “It is not you I have occasion for.”  But, then, where lie objects half-forgotten?  They are present within me, since I look for them there, and find them at last.  Again, in what manner are they there, since I look for them a long while in vain?  What becomes of them?  “I am no more,” says St. Augustin, “what I was when I had the thoughts I cannot find again.  I know not,” continues that father, “either how it comes to pass that I am thus withdrawn from and deprived of myself, or how I am afterwards brought back and restored to myself.  I am, as it were, another man, and carried to another place, when I look for, and do not find, what I had trusted to my memory.  In such a case we cannot reach, and are, in a manner, strangers remote from ourselves.  Nor do we come at us but when we find what we are in quest of.  But where is it we look for but within us?  Or what is it we look for but ourselves? . . .  So unfathomable a difficulty astonishes us!”  I distinctly remember I have known what I do not know at present.  I remember my very oblivion.  I call to mind the pictures or images of every person in every period of life wherein I have seen them formerly, so that the same person passes several times in my head.  At first, I see one a child, then a young, and afterwards an old, man.  I place wrinkles in the same face in which, on the other side, I see the tender graces of infancy.  I join what subsists no more with what is still, without confounding these extremes.  I preserve I know not what, which, by turns, is all that I have seen since I came into the world.  Out of this unknown store come all the perfumes, harmonies, tastes, degrees, and mixtures of colours; in short, all the figures that have passed through my senses, and which they have trusted to my brain.  I revive when I please the joy I felt thirty years ago.  It returns; but sometimes it is not the same it was formerly, and appears without rejoicing me.  I remember I have been well pleased, and yet am not so while I have that remembrance.  On the other hand, I renew past sorrows and troubles.  They are present; for I distinctly perceive them such as they were formerly, and not the least part of their bitterness and lively sense escapes my memory.  But yet they are no more the same; they are dulled, and neither trouble nor disquiet me.  I perceive all their severity without feeling it; or, if I feel it, it is only by representation, which turns a former smart and racking pain into a kind of sport and diversion, for the image of past sorrows rejoices me.  It is the same with pleasures: a virtuous mind is afflicted by the memory of its disorderly unlawful enjoyments.  They are present, for they appear with all their softest and most flattering attendants; but they are no more themselves, and such joys return only to make us uneasy.