HOW TO SEE AND REMEMBER 



THERE is perhaps no other mental endow- 

 ment that seems to give such direct and 

 tangible evidence of mental power as the 

 possession of an unusual memory. Records of ex- 

 ceptional mnemonic powers always excite interest and 

 wonderment. It is little less than appalling to the 

 man of average memory to listen to some of the tales 

 that pass current in this connection. 



We are assured, for example, that Caesar knew by 

 name many thousands of the soldiers of his legions; 

 that Beethoven could memorize a most difficult and com- 

 plex piece of music by hearing it once or twice; that a 

 certain librarian knows the exact shelf-location, as well 

 as the title and author, of every book among the tens of 

 thousands in the library of which he has charge; that 

 Beronicius of Middleburgh knew by heart the works 

 of Virgil, Cicero, Juvenal, Homer, Aristophanes, and 

 the two Plinys; and that Macaulay could repeat the 

 whole of the "Iliad" or of "Paradise Lost" off-hand, 

 and could converse fluently in "numberless" tongues. 

 Again we are told that Leibnitz, "in order to im- 

 press upon his memory what he had a mind to remem- 

 ber, wrote it down and never read it afterwards;" and 

 that Viscount Bolingbroke "retained whatever he read 

 in so singular a manner as to make it entirely his own," 

 so that "in the earlier part of his life he did not read 



