The Star. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1913. MEMORY CAN BE TRAINED.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 10886, 29 September 1913, Page 4

The Star. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1913. MEMORY CAN BE TRAINED.

England has a new prodigy in the person of a Northumberland miner whose memory is so phenomenal that ho can recite whole pages which he has read onoe without making the least slip, and repeat backward or forward the most formidable list of words presented to his gaze or read over by another individual. Those who regretfully plead a treacherous memory, may well envy this genius his 'remarkable gift. Although itself unique and no measure for the average mind, yet something may bo said in favour of educating the memory, or, rather, putting it under discipline much as we do the rest of our mental faculties, and without which undoubtedly they would be as weak or capricious as the " bad memory " which becomes at once our bane and our ready excuse. Experience demonstrates that a man's memory is much more retentive when young than later in life, and, moreover, we seldom forget the'thing in which we are deeply and vitally interested. The person who cannot recite two lines from a book after half a dozen attempts is not at all likely to forget the exact amount of a ecore of debts owing to him, nor any engagement tipon which his heart is fixed. Blaokburn, the famous English chess player, declared that he had but an ordinary memory, but was habituated from childhood to notice clearly " on© tiling at a time." He could play twelve games simultaneously. Almost numberless mechanical schemes have been exploited to aid the human mind in its distressful plight of forgetfulness, but probably all put together they are not worth a minute's notice compared with focussing the mind with single purpose upon the one fact to be retained. Curiously enough, our expanding knowledge and the complex interests of modern life seem to have enfeebled rather than fortified the retentive faculty. Before the deluge of books and periodicals, when men must needs learn by hearsay, it was considered no great marvel to remember and recite national sagas, sacred books, epio poems or treatises and orations. Even to-day, " far from the madding crowd," are found individuals whose minds are an epitome of local history. The German poet Klopstock has memorised Homer's "Iliad" line by line, and there have been numerous instances of folk able to verify mentally almost any chapter or verse from the New Testament. While showing the possibilities and capacity of memory, such instances are becoming rarer, and somehow the average mind, momentarily hopping from one subject to another or hurried along amid tho kaleidoscopic shows and (images of modern life, receives no abiding impression. A fast-speeding automobile tends to make tho landscape a blur. If the modem mind is like the spin of a mirrored lantern amid the restless roll of the soa, there is; all the more need that memory should be rigorously trained to do its duty.