LITMIR.BIZ

      There is no man who has no memory at all; there are thousands who have poor memories, a greater number who have fair memories, but the good and the excellent are not so plentiful.

      A clerk may have a poor memory for general things, a slightly better memory for the ledger accounts which he handles every day, and an excellent memory for the personalities and records of football. But in this course of lessons we are speaking to men and women who have not succeeded as yet in remembering things they want to remember. There is much in life that is too trivial for a permanent record. For instance, a man says “If you ask me what I had for luncheon ten days ago I can only say I have completely forgotten, because the matter in itself was essentially unimportant. I have lunch every day of my life, and I have no food faddisms to trouble me, consequently mental impressions about luncheons are weak. But if you ask me when I first tasted venison, I can tell you all about it, although it happened nearly twenty years ago. I can tell you the people who were at the table and what we all said. The reason why I remember this incident is naturally due to its unique variation from the ordinary meal to which I was accustomed. I forget the ordinary meal because it is so ordinary, and I remember the unique meal because it is unique.” The business man, however, has a certain mass of detail before him every day, and out of that mass he selects a number of items which he wishes to keep in mind ready for instant recall. The function of a good memory is to enable him to do this successfully, but, despite his desire to succeed he often fails. For instance, he meets a man in the train and discovers an identity of interests that would prove useful, but he does not obtain the man’s name and address until the moment of parting, when it is communicated to him verbally, there being no time to find a card.

      The address is: Jonathan Harker, 1,008, Graham Street, Consett. He tries to memorise it at the moment, but, during the Board Meeting that followed, the impression became weak, and when he tries to recall the address, Harker has become Harper, the number of the street has been lost, and he cannot get anywhere near the name, Consett. If he had seen the address printed, he would have gripped it more certainly, for he remembers better by sight than by sound. By a proper system of ear training that address, once heard and impressed upon the attention by will power, would remain good until it could be accurately transmitted to paper.

      There are, therefore, some matters which happily pass into total oblivion; there are other matters, the record of which becomes imperfect in a short space of time; others again, which are brought back after an effort.

       The Long Memory.

      22. Each stage in the development of the memory is useful for its own purposes. For instance, it may be necessary to be able to recollect things for long periods of time, or for a few moments only. Business affairs, prices, quotations, addresses, formulæ, and everything that we have constant occasions to use, must be permanent impressions. But in such mental processes as counting or adding, where only the last figure is to be carried in the memory for a moment, errands, remembering letters to be posted, the cards played in a game, etc., the sooner such facts are dismissed from the memory, the better, because, if they were retained they would only confuse the following impressions.

      That the long memory is only a more lasting form of the short one may be proved by the following experiment. Ask some person to dictate to you fifty names at random, which you will write down as rapidly as possible, paying no further attention to them. It would probably be impossible for you to repeat the list, and in a short time it would be entirely forgotten; but if you were asked immediately after writing it, whether or not a certain name was in it, you could answer with certainty, yes or no. Further, if a particular name, such as Daniels, was repeatedly asked for, and you remarked its having been mentioned several times, the impression of that name might be lasting, and you would probably find that you would recollect the name of Daniels in connection with writing the list, even after years had passed; but the other forty-nine names would have completely faded from your memory.

       Conscious and Subconscious Memory.

      23. Recollection, i.e., “knowing time when, and place where”, is one mark which distinguishes conscious from sub-conscious memory. This localization in time is the ability to find certain reference marks. If you say, “It seems to me that I have heard something about that somewhere”, or “Did I send that letter to so-and-so?” the memory fails to locate the event in time, and therefore does not know whether or not the event ever happened. Sometimes even this vague recollection is wanting, and will lead people to produce matters or ideas, thinking them to be original, which have been stored in the mind, but whose localization in time has been entirely lost. Macaulay tells us that Wycherley had this failing in his declining years, and that if anything was read to him at night he would wake up in the morning full of it, and write out the ideas under the impression that they were entirely original with him. From all this it is clear that the power of conscious recall is one that should be persistently developed; for, as the late Lord Roberts said in a letter to the Pelman Institute: “A good memory is of the greatest use in life.”

       EXERCISES.

      The following exercises are a continuation of those found in Book I. They assist in the acquirement of sound knowledge and develop eye and ear memory.

       Exercise V.

      When next you take a walk abroad, either in town or country, resolve to notice as much as you can of the things that are in the slightest degree unusual. You will, of course, see much that is familiar, the same kind of people wearing the same kind of clothes, and hear them using the same kind of talk; but keep your eyes and ears open for anything that is out of the common. Deliberately search for sights and sounds with an element of newness to you. When you have returned from your walk, hastily go over in your mind the route you took (and do not cover the same ground twice over), then commence

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