MEMORY AND HOW TO DEVELOP IT CHAPTER 3

Memory is accumulated genius.-- James Russell Lowell.

Memory is the permanence of perception.--Latson.

THE value of any man to himself and to the world at large depends in great degree upon his memory--upon his ability to recall and to use at any desired moment the recollection of what he has seen, heard, experienced, or thought.

Memory is really the stock in trade of our mental life. Our perceptions bring to us a vast mass of experiences--things that we have seen, heard, touched, tasted, and smelled--our thoughts and experiences. But these things are valuable only when they are held in the memory. For, unless they are remembered they cannot be used. Most of us have forgotten much more than we remember. We have studied – at school, at college, at home. We have read many, many books. We have had any number of interesting and instructive conversations. We have, some of us, traveled and seen many rare and curious things. And of it all, how much is in our possession at the moment--how much is at our ready command? Not one tenth—probably not one hundredth.

Imagine the enormous loss to us. Imagine the waste of time and effort. Imagine what it would mean to you or to me if, instead of possessing a memory which preserved for us only one hundredth of our experiences, we could remember and apply at will one half, three quarters, four fifths of what we have been through.

"But that is impossible," you say. Allow me to contradict you. There have been many cases of recollective power which prove otherwise. The most striking of these was Antonio Magliabecchi, who lived in Italy in the seventeenth century. From being a mere servant he rose until he became the librarian of Cosmo III., the Grand Duke of Turin. Magliabecchi's memory was prodigious; nothing that he had ever seen or heard or experienced was ever lost to him. It is said that after one reading he could repeat verbatim any book in the library of his patron, who at this time owned one of the largest collections of the day.

"Impossible," you say. Not at all. I know a man who can neither read nor write except to sign his name. He is an Irishman who began life in this country with a pick and a shovel. Today he is a man of wealth and power, financially and politically. He is a contractor, real estate operator, stock speculator, and is interested in several other lines of business. He keeps no books and employs no bookkeepers. All his values, dates, and figures are carried in his head; and at any moment he can tell to a cent how he stands with any of his business associates.

Among the ancient Greeks it was not at all unusual to find an educated patrician who could recite verbatim the entire poems of Homer--the Iliad and the Odyssey. Cyrus the Great could call by name any man of his army, numbering one million. Napoleon had power of memory almost as remarkable. Gladstone, when presenting to Parliament his yearly budget, would speak for several hours, presenting monetary details running into many million pounds without one glance at the written report lying on the table before him. Robert G. Ingersoll, that great jurist and brilliant orator, would attend a trial lasting many days without taking any notes. Yet in his speeches to the jury, lasting sometimes many hours, he never forgot or missed a point of the opposition.

And so I might go on. Scott, Milton, Shakespeare, Washington, Clay, Webster--all these were remarkable for their power of memory. In fact it is safe to say that every man who has ever attained a high place among men has been possessed of a retentive and exact memory.

So we can see that, as an asset in practical life, whether one's ambition be literary, artistic, scientific, or merely the transferring of dollars from some one's pocket into his own--as a practical asset, power of memory is of the highest conceivable value. A good memory will give you an incalculable advantage over others--an advantage which no other mental qualification will balance.

Memory Training Not Difficult.

The mind is like potter's clay--it is easily molded. And there is no direction in which development is so easy as in the department of memory. Even a few days of practice along the lines which I shall suggest will generally make a noticeable difference, and two or three months of conscientious training will often be sufficient to metamorphose a poor, weak, and inexact memory into one that is tenacious and reliable.

The Nature of Memory.

In the introductory article of this series I promised you that I would not be theoretical or descriptive, but that I would make these chapters purely practical. Now, I intend to keep my word; but, in order to make what follows more intelligible and helpful, it will be well just here to stop for a moment and make a few brief statements as to the nature of memory.

In the first place, I may say at once that, in reality, there is no such thing as "the memory." This sounds very much like an old-fashioned Irish "bull"; but it is merely a statement of sober fact. There is no memory: there are only memories. When I say that I am not merely juggling with terms; the difference is important and fundamental.

I mean just this: Memory is not, as we used to be taught many years ago, a "faculty of the soul"--a little section of the brain to be developed all by itself. Not at all. Memory is merely a term used to describe the way that certain acts or thoughts tend to remain in the mind. And every act or thought has its own separate little memory.

Some acts or thoughts we remember easily; other acts or thoughts we remember with difficulty, if at all. If some one were to describe to me the details of a case of insanity, symptoms, history, treatment, I should remember it a long time; because, as a physician,

I am interested in psychiatry. But, although I listened patiently a day or two ago to a long account of the Wall Street adventures of an acquaintance of mine, I am quite sure that I could give no intelligent account thereof, because I know little and care less about such matters. In the same way some people have good memory for names, but cannot recall faces, others can remember dates, but have no power to recollect names. And so on.

The point is just this: We remember best the things in which we have most interest, the things with which we are most familiar. The little memory of any act or thought may stick in the mind or it may not--whether it is or is not remembered depends mainly upon the amount of attention we have given to that act or that thought at the time it was occurring.

If, therefore, we would have fine powers of memory--if we desire a large supply of clear, vivid memories all under instant command, it is essential that we should pay to the thing we wish to remember strict attention and careful study. And this is really the great secret of what is called "good memory."

In other words, a memory is simply a permanency, a recurrence, of a perception; and that memory is clear and complete just in proportion as the perception was clear and complete. If, on an introduction to a stranger, I scarcely glance at his face and pay little or no attention to the name, I am not likely to remember either the man or the name. If, on the other hand, I look closely at him and attend carefully to the name, I shall be likely to remember it, perhaps for years.

I, myself, frequently have presented to me twenty-five or thirty strangers in the course of an evening; and I am usually able afterward to recall all or nearly all of their names and faces.

This is merely the result of a habit of attention to the matter.

Now, then, based upon the principle just discussed, we may formulate our first rule for the development of memory: Study the object you wish to remember in all its phases, in all its peculiarities, in all its relations. For the time being keep every other thought out of the mind. Make the object part of yourself; and you will never forget it. I say object, but I mean, of course, anything, fact, figure, idea, principle, or plan, to all of which the same rule applies.

So much for the rule; but you would like to know exactly how to apply this rule to practical development. Well, one of the best ways I know is the following:--

You are walking down the street. A carriage passes at which you have glanced casually. After it has passed, question yourself about it. What kind of a carriage was it--landeau, barouche, brougham, or what? What was the color of the wheels? Had they rubber tires? How many horses were there? Their color? The coachman--black or white? The livery, if any? How many occupants--men or women? How dressed? Do you remember all their faces, so that if you saw them again you would know them? And so on.

By the time you have done this conscientiously on a dozen occasions you will be surprised and delighted at the improvement in your ability both to perceive and to remember; for, as I cannot reiterate too often, the two, perception and memory, are practically one.

Well, after passing the carriage and getting all the good you can out of the experience in an educational way, you will come to a shop window--the window of a toy shop, let us say. Don't stop to look at the window; that will merely confuse you. Take one glance at it, and pass on.

Then ask yourself what you saw in the window. If practicable have a pad and pencil, and write down each article as you remember it. This is the method employed by the famous conjurer, Robert Houdin--a method by which he so trained the memory both of himself and of his young son that they were able to remember over thirty thousand questions and answers, which formed the code of their famous "second sight" act.

Another valuable method of memory training is to make it a rule every night, either before or after retiring, to review in detail the events of the day. This was the method employed by the great Edward Thurlow, lord high chancellor of Great Britain. At first his memory was so poor that he was unable to recall what he had eaten for breakfast. Eventually, however, he developed one of the most remarkable memories on record. I know of a number of cases in which this method has proven of the utmost value.

Another very simple and convenient, but at the same time very useful, method of culturing the power of recollection is the following: Take some interesting book, such as a historical work, or some attractive novel. Read a paragraph to yourself slowly and carefully. Then close the book and repeat aloud the substance of the section which you have just read. Make no attempt to repeat the passage word for word. Simply give the sense of it as you remember. It matters little whether you repeat the author's words or use your own. After your first attempt (which is not likely to be a striking success) read the paragraph again and make a second effort to recall and express its general meaning.

When you have learned this paragraph fairly well, pass on to the next, and so on, until you come to the last paragraph on the page. Then take that page as your task, and give an account of the entire page. After practicing this way on every paragraph and every page until the end of the chapter, take the chapter as a whole and repeat it as fully and exactly as you can.

This seems like hard work. And it is, at first. But it soon becomes interesting, especially as you begin to find that, although at first you were unable to give any clear idea of a paragraph you had just read, you are soon able to recall, and to clearly express, the sense of an entire chapter without any great effort or difficulty.

This exercise trains not only the memory, but the perceptions, the will, and the powers of expression. So far as I know, it was invented by Henry Clay, in his early farm boy days, and was often quoted by him as being the method which had done most toward developing his prodigious memory and splendid oratorical ability.

A valuable variation of the above exercise is to write out at length, instead of attempting to express in spoken words, your recollection of the paragraph, the page, the chapter. For those who desire the widest development--a development of the power of expression in writing as well as in speech--I should suggest that they practice this exercise by both talking and writing their memories of the passage.

By the time you have gone over one book in this way, talking out certain passages and writing others, you will not only know that book in a way that few people ever know any book; but you will have developed added powers of attention, will power, memory, and expression, which will prove a surprise and a delight to you.

The Pictorial Faculty.

One of the prime secrets of memory is to develop the ability to recall before the mind a picture of the object desired --a vivid recollection of its appearance. When a schoolboy I discovered that there was no use whatever in my studying either my spelling or my geography lesson. All that was necessary was for me to pass my eye slowly down the list of words for spelling and to look at the map of the particular section we were studying. After that I could bring up before me a clear picture of any word called for or of any section of the map covering our lesson.

In questioning musicians who are able to play from memory long passages on the piano or violin, I find that in the majority of cases they remember the appearance of the page of music, and follow the notes just as if the real page were before them. This power of visualizing memories has been in some people developed to a surprising extent. The mnemosynic achievements of the Houdins and of Magliabecchi referred to above, as well as of other prodigies like the mathematical wonder, Zerah Colburn, and his prototype, Jacques Inaudie--the memory feats of these depend largely, in some cases entirely, upon the visualizing faculty.

And what is the best method of developing this power of sight memory? There are several very simple and valuable. First try this: Write out in a clear hand a list of words in column form. The list should contain at first not more than five or six words; later it may be extended to twenty or even thirty.

Now place your list of six words before you and look at it for a moment. Don't stare or strain the eyes. Don't try to remember the words--yet. This is the moment for observation—forgetting upon the photographic plate of the mind a clear memory-picture of the list of words. After a moment of steady gazing, cover the paper and try to remember exactly what the words were and how they looked. At first you are likely to find this difficult. Soon it will be easy to remember six-- to recall the words, passing up as well as down the column. Then gradually increase the number until you can handle at least twenty-five.

A useful variation of this exercise is to use figures instead of words, arranging them at first as a square of four figures, and calling each one off while you remember its position. Here again, as soon as four is easy for you, increase the number of figures by two, until you can retain, after a single look, a clear picture of thirty-six or more figures. I have known a boy of twelve who was able to remember sixty-four figures--a square of eight figures up and eight across. He would, on request, call off first line of figures forward, third line of figures backward, line of units down, and so on--in other words, this boy could see in his mind's eye a mental picture of those sixty-four figures that was absolutely as clear as the original had been to the physical eye.

I may add that the boy I refer to was not in any sense exceptional, save that he had become interested in the "tricks" which I taught him and his fellows. All of them are now men of notably fine memory.

The same method may be varied in other ways. For instance, letters may be substituted for the figures or words may be arranged in groups, say twelve in groups of three each, the exercise being to remember not only the word but its position in relation to the other words. So exercises for developing the power of memory can be multiplied indefinitely. Those given above, however, are more than sufficient, if properly practiced.

Union accomplishes all things.--Sophocles.

I have only to take up this or that to flood my soul with memories.--Mme. Deluzy.

The whole art of mental training is based upon the fact that any action at first executed with conscious effort becomes, in time, sub-conscious and habitual--Thompson Jay Hudson.

Within the secret chambers of the brain, the thoughts lie linked by many a mystic chain. Awake but one, and lo, what legions rise! Each stamps its image as the other dies.--COWPER.