A complete guide to the improvement of the memory or the science of memory simplified : with practical applications to languages, history, geography, music, prose, poetry, shorthand, etc. / by J. H. Bacon.

  • Bacon, J. H.
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A complete guide to the improvement of the memory or the science of memory simplified : with practical applications to languages, history, geography, music, prose, poetry, shorthand, etc. / by J. H. Bacon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    mory mankind were indebted for their progress in know- ledge. Plutarch calls it the larder of the soul from which it takes its food and sustenance. John Locke, in his work On the Huma7i Understa7idi7ig^ terms it the storehouse of our ideas; while the celebrated Robert Hall speaks of it as the great power or master of the rolls of the soul, a power that can make amends for the speed of time, in causing him to leave behind him those things which else he would carry away as if they had not been. Lord Tennyson, in one of his beautiful odes, speaks thus in its praise:— '' Thou who stealest fire From the fountains of the past To glorify the present; O haste ! Visit my low desire. Strengthen me ! Enlighten me ! I famt in this obscurity, Thou dewy dawn of Memory. Memory is a possession which is committed to every- one to be improved ; and yet the frequent I forgot it, which falls as a dead weight upon our ears when offered as an excuse for the omission of some duty, or for the non-performance of some engagement, would lead us to suppose that this faculty is possessed by very few. If we could conceive of a person without memory, it is evident that such a one v^'ould be unfit for social life, and for a place among the busy activities of the world. A man without memory, says Seneca, in the Latin sentence quoted on the title-page of this work, is a madman or an idiot. The variety in the power of Memory which exists in different persons has been frequently noted. In some, observes John Locke, the mind retains the characters drawn upon it like marble ; in others like freestone, and in others little better than sand. Themistocles, a cele- brated Greek general, is said to have known every citizen in Athens, and when one offered to teach him the Art of IMemory, then first made public, he inquired what it would do for him : It will enable you to remember everything, was the reply. The general rejoined that he would rather understand the art of forgetting than of remembering, so oppressed was he with the strength of his memory. It is said of Cyrus that he knew the name of every soldier in his army. Otho, the Roman Emperor, owed in a great