THE SCIENCE OF HAPPINESS 



reading and insures facile forgetting. The days when 

 men remembered everything that they heard were the 

 days when few things were to be heard. The man who 

 has a day's history of the world for breakfast must ex- 

 pect mental indigestion, His mind would be a hope- 

 less junkshop of useless information if he were to re- 

 member one tithe of what he reads. So he sedulously 

 cultivates a poor memory; and then bemoans the hard 

 fate that has failed to make him a living phonograph. 



In justice to Nature it must be said of memory, as of 

 the receptive faculties, that every man of ordinary 

 mind has capacity enough in this direction to make 

 him an "able man" if his other faculties match it, and 

 if it is properly developed. Illustrations of the possibili- 

 ties of memory-development in minds of very mediocre 

 calibre are familiar enough in e very-day life. Doubt- 

 less the reader has sometime dined with a half dozen 

 friends at a restaurant where the old-fashioned method of 

 taking verbal orders from the menu is still in vogue. 

 Which one of you could remember the various orders as 

 the waiter does? He has a remarkable memory in- 

 deed, you say. Not at all. He has simply put in 

 practise the elementary rule for the cultivation of mem- 

 ory (without ever having heard it) and so has developed 

 his memory in one line to about its normal limit. 



The psychological law on which the waiter has un- 

 consciously acted is the very simple one that vivid im- 

 pressions are lasting. If you will take a mental retro- 

 spect of your life, you will find that certain particular 

 events stand out conspicuously in a generally blurred 

 field. In a hurried glance, perhaps not more than 



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