The principal foe of a secondary nature is what was once called phantasy; that is, the reappearance of thoughts and images due to recollection or memory.
Memory is an important power, but mind in itself is not memory
Mind is restless and wandering in its nature, and must be controlled.
Its wandering disposition is necessary or stagnation would result.
But it can be controlled and fixed upon an object or idea.
Now as we are constantly looking at and hearing of new things, the natural restlessness of the mind becomes prominent when we set about pinning it down.
Then memory of many objects, things, subjects, duties, persons, circumstances, and affairs brings up before it the various pictures and thoughts belonging to them.
After these the mind at once tries to go, and we find ourselves wandering from the point.
It must hence follow that the storing of a multiplicity of useless and surely-recurring thoughts is an obstacle to the acquirement of truth.
And this obstacle is the very one peculiar to our present style of life.
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