MEMORY.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 5737, 19 August 1879, Page 3

MEMORY.

Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered a 1 ecture recently at Boston on the greatest of all the mental faculties. The lecturer began by saying that memory was the leading faculty of the mind. It was the principle of gravity which kept all other faculties cohesively together and prevented them flying off in the world of action. Man’s memory was the cement, the matrix which contained the various particles of which his intelligence was composed. Its action was to collect and re-collect all the experiences of life. It seized hold of history wherever it was to be found—in books, in observation, in conversation, in meditation, or elsewhere—and laid it away in the recesses of the mind in mysterious fashion, becoming a storehouse of knowledge for present and future use. This knowledge often lay dormant for years, but at the proper time asserted itself, if properly stored, in a mysterious way. Memory was the principal agent in settling the intellectual rank of men. Two people might start out on terms of mental equality. Both should read the same books, and living side by side have the same advantages of experience. But one read and observed differently from the other. The one fixed what he saw and heard in his mind ; the other allowed it to slip from him. The minds of the two men then resembled the difference between a well and a poorly constructed tool. For , example, a finely made watch, or a sharp and perfectly tempered knife-blade represented one mind, while the other was a clumsily manufactured article. It was said of Humboldt tha t he remembered every book he ever read, and everything he ever saw in perfection. This was the case with most of the great men of history. Nearly all of the world's most remarkable orators, poets, statesmen, wits, soldiers, philosophers, scientists, &c., were men of tenacious memory. Quintillian had said that memory was genius. While this was true in the main it did not always follow that men of genius possessed it. Isaac Newton was a remarkable exception. Ho could not remember oftentimes his own great works without trouble ; and Newton’s genius was undoubted. Themistocles on the other hand remembered everything. On one occasion an admirer asked the great Athenian how he could remember everything. “ I would rather teach you how to forget everything," was the reply. But this was wit and not reason, said the lecturer. It had been said that the affections or feelings were the greatest incentives to memory.' The senses or passions lead men to remember. Napoleon cared nothing for Alexandrine verse, but not one line of his army returns was ever absent from his mind. Scipio knew nearly every man by face and name in

his army; Seneca could repeat 2000 words of a poem only once heard ; Mittendates, who commanded an army rnad,. ug u' ad she nations of the globe, could ceuveise in all their representative languages. The Prince of Orange on one occasion saw Grotius standing by out of curiosity during the roll call of one of his regiments. Having heard much of Grotius' memory, he asked him if lie could remember the names which had been read. Grotius astounded the prince hy giving all the names in inverse order. A great scholar had once been deprived by an enemy of a much-loved book. His enemy thought he had conquered him, but the scholar re-wrote the book from memory, and defied his enemy. As a further illustration of the memory being strong when the feelings are enlisted, the lecturer said a man never forgets a debt clue himself, nor, as Dr. Johnson says, who kicked him last. The Dte John Brown, of Osawatomie and Harper's Ferry fame, was fond of sheep farming, and had at one time 3000 sheep, each one of which he could single out from any other flock into which it might have strayed. In his own town of Concord, his neighbor, Mr. Abel Norton, who dealt in horses and was very fond of them, could remember at a glance any oue of the hundreds of animals that he had ever seen. Horses which had been sent years ago to various parts of Massachusetts by Mr. Norton sometimes came back to Concord, and were at once recognised by him as they were driven along the street