to do a far greater amount of superficial observation and recollection than children can do.

Attention is regarded as the condition of memory (see Chapter VII). Attention implies a selection of a small province of the field before us, and a neglect of the rest. Hence the training of attention implies also a cultivation of neglect.) As we grow mature in our intellectual power we increase in our ability to seize the objects of our choice and to pass over without notice all others. The person without a well-developed power of attention is in a state of passivity toward invading external influences. He is a prey to impressions that come from his environment. Most of these "early impressions," of which we hear so much, were received at a time when trivial things could seize upon us and absorb our powers of observation to the neglect of more essential things. Such passive impressibility, the condition of the childish memory, it is the object of education to eradicate. The pupil must learn to exclude and ignore the many things before him, and to concentrate all his powers of mind on the one chosen subject. Mr. Kay truly remarks (page 259), "It is as one is able to shut out every other object, every other idea, even self, from the mind that he attains the highest degree of mental power."

It follows that the discipline of attention makes the memory uneven or unequal. The study of relations weakens our memory of mere isolated data. The study of general ideas causes us to be careless in regard to specific details that naturally follow as effects. Our insight into laws weakens our hold of special instances. Knowing the law of eclipses, we can calculate all past

and all future instances, and we do not care to burden our memory with the historical record of eclipses. Our attention to the meaning of a word weakens our memory of its sound; attention to a person's character makes us less careful to remember his costume.

While, therefore, it is a correct educational maxim that the memory must be trained on essential relations and causal processes so as to strengthen the power of thought at the same time, yet there may be excess even in this direction. We find, accordingly, people whose memory of dates is so defective as to cause much waste of power; other persons are so forgetful of names as to be under constant embarrassment in conversation or in writing.

It is a reasonable thing to correct special defects in the lower orders of memory when they become matters of serious embarrassment. Those special powers of memory should in that case be strengthened. It is a perception of this necessity that has led to systems of mnemonics. The common device of such systems has been association of the items of one province of memory with those of another. The items easily forgotten are fastened, so to speak, to items easily rememberednames or dates, for example, to places or events. As it often happens that the items of one order are not related to the other order by the principle of causality or genetic development, it happens that the mnemonic association by which memory of a particular kind is to be strengthened, is merely an accidental relation of the items associated. Contiguity of space or accidental resemblance in sound is to assist us to remember. By mnemonics we cultivate a habit of consciously seeking

such accidental relations, and we accordingly injure our power of logical thought by neglecting essential for unessential relations. Our author (page 281) condemns such mnemonic devices severely-" The wrong association of ideas in the mind is a source of endless mischief," and quotes Locke as saying: "The connection in our minds of ideas, in themselves loose and independent of one another, has such an influence and is of so great force to set us wrong in our actions, as well moral and natural, passions, reasonings, and notions themselves, that perhaps there is not any one thing that deserves more to be looked after."

An example of this wrong method: Gregor von Feinaigle's "New Art of Memory" (London, 1812) says that "the recollection of ideas is assisted by associating some idea of relation between them; and as we find by experience that whatever is ludicrous is calculated to make a strong impression upon the mind, the more ridiculous the association is the better." Think of an effort of the mind to discover absurd and ridiculous relations between ideas with a view to remember them! That were to cultivate memory at the expense of sane, rational thought.

The true method of cultivating and strengthening a defective memory is to practice it on the kind of items that it easily forgets. A few such items must be memorized and reviewed daily, adding a small increment to the list as soon as it has become perfectly mastered. A list with fifty items thus memorized will suffice to develop a habit of attention to such items and a power of recalling them, which will grow steadily with such exercise as circumstances bring occasion for.

A personal example may be related. The writer, when in his eighteenth year, was embarrassed by the feebleness of his memory for dates. He commenced learning a list of the dates of accession of English kings-William the Conqueror in 1066, William Rufus in 1087, etc.-three or four dates the first day; two new ones added the second day; one new one added the third day; thereafter less often. Constant review byand-by made the entire list familiar. It had to be learned anew a year after, and once again after some years of neglect. But the memory for dates grew steadily, and, without conscious effort, dates and numbers soon came to be seized with a firmer grasp than before. This kind of memory still increases with the writer from year to year, and, although it is not by any means a phenomenal memory, it is very serviceable.

A similar cultivation of the special memory for proper names (which in the writer's case had become very weak and threatened to go altogether) has proved serviceable.

The special kind of memory that is weak should be cultivated by itself and not attached to some other form of memory. The simile of a magnet is to the point here. Load it to-day with iron filings, and to-morrow it will support a few more. The memory, if only strong enough to retain a single item with effort, will grow stronger by the effort, and will soon retain two items, and finally others in vast numbers and without effort.

By this method we avoid fantastic associations and correct the weak faculty itself, instead of fastening its work on another faculty. Let the exercise be a list of dates valuable to retain for themselves. Or, if it is

names that one wishes to remember, select a list of important persons that furnish centers of historical information; such, for example, as the names of the Roman emperors, the English and the French kings, the heroes of Plutarch's histories; or of typical personalities, such as the characters in Shakespeare's dramas or in Homer's "Iliad "-items of world-historical importance.

A list of one hundred proper names learned in their order, as kings of France and of England, and the emperors of Rome, will furnish central nuclei to historic material, and the memorizing of such a list, or, indeed, a list half as large, will so discipline the memory for names as to permanently remove all embarrassment from this source. It is not the length of the list, so much as the thoroughness with which it is learned, that develops the memory. It is not well to go on beyond a hundred items, for the reason that such mechanical memory should not be made too strong. Idiots and semi-idiots may show prodigious powers of remembering numbers, and very feeble intellects may be exceptionally apt in remembering names and other words. Therefore, while there should be some special training to strengthen varieties of mechanical memory that have become too weak for the service required of them, they should not be over-cultivated.

Repetition and careful attention should be relied upon more than association in the cultivation of the mechanical varieties of memory, for the reason that association, though more showy and brilliant in its effects than repetition and attention, is not so much a correction of the special province of memory defective as a substitution of another province of memory for the de