SECT.  XLIX.  Two Wonders of the Memory and Brain.

Here, therefore, are two wonders equally incomprehensible.  The first, that my brain is a kind of book, that contains a number almost infinite of images, and characters ranged in an order I did not contrive, and of which chance could not be the author.  For I never had the least thought either of writing anything in my brain, or to place in any order the images and characters I imprinted in it.  I had no other thought but only to see the objects that struck my senses.  Neither could chance make so marvellous a book: even all the art of man is too imperfect ever to reach so high a perfection, therefore what hand had the skill to compose it?

The second wonder I find in my brain, is to see that my mind reads with so much ease, whatever it pleases, in that inward book; and read even characters it does not know.  I never saw the traces or figures imprinted in my brain, and even the substance of my brain itself, which is like the paper of that book, is altogether unknown to me.  All those numberless characters transpose themselves, and afterwards resume their rank and place to obey my command.  I have, as it were, a divine power over a work I am unacquainted with, and which is incapable of knowledge.  That which understands nothing, understands my thought and performs it instantly.  The thought of man has no power over bodies: I am sensible of it by running over all nature.  There is but one single body which my bare will moves, as if it were a deity; and even moves the most subtle and nicest springs of it, without knowing them.  Now, who is it that united my will to this body, and gave it so much power over it?