[The Mystic Will by Charles Godfrey Leland]@TWC D-Link book
The Mystic Will

CHAPTER VII
10/11

So we go to work to fill up the quantum of memory as soon as possible by violent cramming, and in like manner tax to the utmost all the mental faculties without making the least effort to prepare, enlarge or strengthen them.
I shall not live to see it, but a time will come when this preparation of the mental faculties will be regarded as the basis of all education.
To recapitulate in a few words.

When we desire to fix anything in the memory we can do so by repeating it to ourselves before we go to sleep, accompanying it with the resolution to remember it in future.
We must not in the beginning set ourselves any but very easy tasks, and the practice must be steadily continued.
It has been often said that a perfect memory is less of a blessing than the power of oblivion.

Thus THEMISTOCLES (who, according to CATO, as cited by CICERO, knew the names and faces of every man in Athens) having offered to teach some one the art of memory, received for reply, "Rather teach me how to forget"-- _esse facturum si se oblivisci quae vellet, quam si meminisse docuisset_.

And CLAUDIUS had such an enviable power in the latter respect that immediately after he had put to death his wife MESSALINA, he forgot all about it, asking, "_Cur domina non veniret_ ?"--"Why the Missus didn't come ?"--while on the following day, after condemning several friends to death, he sent invitations to them to come and dine with him.

And again, there are people who have, as it were, two memories, one good, the other bad, as was the case with CALVISIUS SABRINUS, who could recall anything in literature, but never remembered the names of his own servants, or even his friends.


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