Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1891-06-24
ARTIFICIAL MEMORY.
Hundreds Of Different Systems Of
Mind Training.
Instances OF the Wonderful Power -
Memory Possessed by Great Men
Erroneous Methods Of Cultivat-
Ing the Memory.

Ing the Memory.
A recent writer who firmly believes
that he has discovered complete sys-
! tenn of making the human memory per-
feet says that up to the present time
there have been produced 400 mnemonic
systems, all bearing different names
200 before this century and 200 within
the century-and yet he admits, more in
sorrow than in anger, that most peo-
pies forgetting" Is much more reH-
able than their memory, and that no
one Of the 400 SYSTEMS has ever sue
ceeded in making man remember
every time to post his wife's letter the
day on which 1t was handed to him.
The fact that there have been 400 sys-
TENS of mnemonics devised and tried
would seem to indicate the impossible
ty of the complete cultivation Of the
memory, says the San Francisco Chron-
icle. 1t has not required any 400 at
tempts to demonstrate the binomial
theorem nor to prove the impossibiHty
of squaring the circle, though the latter
is still believed possible by some half
educated mathematicians, nor has 1t
been necessary to devise 400 systems
for the development OF the muscles OF
the human body.
That the memory can be improved
both in capacity and accuracy is indis-
putable, but that It can be made into Q
machine which shall respond with Ger
tainty to the will of its possessor is
another matter. Persons of remarkable
memories like Lord Macaulay, Cardinal
Mezzofanti and others are of no use to
the believers In or advocates Of
mnemonic systems, but simply because
they could not forget Mezzofanti,
whose wonderful memory was chiefly
linguistic, said that he never forgot q
word In a foreign language that he onoe
heard, and Macaulay said that most of
what he remembered with accuracy had
been acquired with ease and was re-
tanned without conscious effort, like the
roll of the archbishops of Westminster,
for example, or the fugitive pieces Of
poetry which he had read as child.
The inherent weakness of every sys-
tenn of artificial memory is its artih-
ciality-that is, It's attempt to teach one
to remember one set of things by re-
membering another. To do this the
student must remember not only the
new set of things, but the connecting
links, which is certainly imposing upon
his memory double burden, at least.
No man can fail to know and under
: IIc ssss 4lAe aid which association supplies
to memory, No.. 49, .O'~I.N-sise artificial and
fictitious associations % enable one to
remember is too like promisliir the
children at table that the one that eats
the most bread and butter shall have
the most pudding. When the pudding
comes there is ne vacancy to be filed.
There Is, we think, an infanible rule
for aiding the memory, but it cannot be
! reduced to system. 1t is to cultivate
the faculties of observation and atten-
ton. Robert Houdin, the celebrated
French conjurer. who invented the Sec
ond-sight trick, has given US an insight
into this in his interesting memoirs. He
says that 1t was the custom of himself
and his son, who was mis- assistant,
when passing along the street to glance
into a shop window and then try to see
how many of the objects on exhibition
they could recall. BY so doing he says
they both became expert in very short
time, but that the boy could see and re-
call nearly third more than he could.
But suppose that instead of remember
ing, say box of bluing, he had to re-
call, first, soap, then tub, then laundry,
then shirt, and then bluing, it is easy
to see that his list Of articles would
have been very much shorter, and yet
this is no exaggeration of the methods
proposed by some professors of mne-
monies.
Another great aid to memory is the
determination not to forget. Even if
we adopt the theory that it is impossi-
BILE to forget anything, we may, by a
vigorous exercise of will power, keep
one or more things at the top of the
heap In that storehouse which we call
memory. We may insist with ourselves
that objects of value shall not be COW
cred up with rubbish and trash, but
| shall be ready at hand when we want
them. 1t is true that we often do for
get important matters and remember
trifles, but that is because of our care
lessness and Indifference, not because
of any congenital defect of memory.
The sum of the whole matter seems to
be that while there are good memories
and bad, as there are strong eyes and
weak, the poor memory may be I'm
proved by the systematic md proper
exercise, but that the numerous inven-
] tons which have been tried for the put
ting symbols and catchwords in the
place of memory are not successful, and
never will be. The art of memories
was once summarized by one who said
that he had devised a perfect system,
and now if he could only remember the
system he would be all right.