GOOD AND BAD MEMORIES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 208, 2 September 1899, Page 2 (Supplement)

GOOD AND BAD MEMORIES.

The difference between a good memory and a bad one, I am convinced, says a doctor, is a mere matter of practice and use. I believe we never really "forget" anything which has been conveyed to the brain cells by our senses. "Information received" is all treasured up; our difficulty is to reproduce it at will. Think "of the thousand things that flash across bur minds whereof we have no conception at all that they have been retained. Events of our childhood, trivial actions or words, and the like, which one might assume have all passed into the "Ewigkeit" of brainland, nevertheless are there still, dormant, it may be, but only waiting the same stimulus, some connecting link of thought to disinter them. The good memory is one that readily finds what it wants in the shelves and lockers of the brain bureau, and I say this power of readily getting at our stores lot knowledge is mostly a matter of practice. So many people never use their memories adequately, and the result is that the brain cells, through 'disuse, refuse to respond readily to the calls made upon them. All memory systems proceed on the principle of'getting people to associate ideas together, and this is precisely what we ,nll do in one way or another, in the affairs of life, only most of us do not carry out the work systematically. It is association of ideas, the linking- of things together which constitute the basis of all our consciousness. Each of us acts and thinks from facts and actions which are all connected together somehow or other, and the efficient memory is that which most quickly and readily makes its linkages, and disinters from among the millions of impressions those which are demanded for the purposes of the passing show.