THE SCIENCE OF HAPPINESS 



much, or at least many books, for which he used to 

 give the same reason that Menage gave for not reading 

 Moreri's Dictionary, namely, that 'he was unwilling to 

 fill his head with what did not belong there, since, when 

 it was once in, he knew not how to get it out again."' 



Contrast all this with the case of the average man, 

 who sometimes forgets the names of his personal friends; 

 who requires a week to memorise a single tune; who 

 can not tell just where to find the volumes of his own 

 little library; whose stock of quotations is limited to 

 about a score of couplets; who spends a lifetime try- 

 ing to learn to speak two or three languages; who 

 makes notes expecting to consult them, and then for- 

 gets what he has done with the notes; and whose chief 

 concern is, not how to get rubbish out of his head, but 

 how to keep anything in. This average man, himself 

 making the contrast between those vise-like memories 

 and his own feeble and yielding equipment, may not 

 unlikely be disposed to feel that Nature has dealt un- 

 kindly with hm. Nevertheless he may find crumbs of 

 comfort if he search for them. 



It is gratifying, for example, to be told by so great an 

 authority as Sir William Hamilton that a too retentive 

 memory interferes with clearness of thinking by pre- 

 senting too many conflicting details and thus bringing 

 confusion. It is cheering, too, to reflect that before 

 the advent of general culture through the invention of 

 printing, everybody carried all his knowledge at his 

 tongue's end. Phenomenal memories were then as 

 common as the lack of them is at present; yet no one 

 pretends that these great memories pre-supposed or pro- 



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