36 ATTENTION AND ASSOCIATION. 



otherwise have to sustain, you must not permit this 

 circumstance to tempt you to undervalue that intellectual 

 faculty, or to neglect its cultivation. 



Assume it as an unquestionable truth that whatever 

 is once deposited in the memory can never, while the 

 understanding remains, be entirely obliterated. It may, 

 by the obscurity of its traces, seem to elude the mental 

 ken, but there it is, notwithstanding.* The memory is 

 faithful to its trust; but the power of recalling may 

 have been imperfectly cultivated; and in consequence 

 the record of the fact or of the proposition which you 

 seek remains in concealment, simply because you have 

 not cultivated the art, or mastered the use of the instru- 

 ments which would infallibly seize it, and raise it into 

 light. 



All that I have just been saying of grouping and 

 classification receives one of its most valuable applica- 

 tions here ; and attention and association are the main 

 principles upon which the application depends. Atten- 

 tion, essential to the formation of the military character 

 from first to last, is equally necessary to the cultivation 

 and growth of the powers of memory. The distinct and 

 easy recollection of any fact is usually proportional to 

 the intensity with which it has been contemplated, and 

 the watchfulness with which it has been deposited in the 

 general receptacle. Attention is a voluntary act, influ- 

 enced by previous intellectual habits, and therefore 

 susceptible of steady and constant improvement by daily 

 exercise. Even the occasional instances of forgetfulness 

 which occur to every one, may have their use in quick- 



* In proof of this, call to mind the fearful rapidity and vivid intensity 

 with which a numerous and long- forgotten train of circumstances present 

 themselves before you, on the death of a friend, or some other solemn 

 event. 



