THE SCIENCE OF HAPPINESS 



ment you may make on what you had supposed were 

 your limits of memorising. I know a man who plays 

 three simultaneous blindfold games of chess and usually 

 wins against very competent opponents, and yet who 

 claims that he has not, in any sense, an unusual memory; 

 that, on the other hand, various of his business associates 

 are unquestionably better endowed in that regard than 

 he. He has simply developed his memory in one direc- 

 tion to something like its normal limits, somewhat 

 as the average Brahman develops his memory to its 

 limits when he learns to repeat the 10,000 verses of the 

 Rig- Veda, or the average Mohammedan when he learns 

 the Koran by heart. 



A striking illustration of the latent possibilities of 

 memory-development is furnished by the case of Hein- 

 rich Schliemann, the famous archaeologist, the man 

 who discovered the site of ancient Troy. Schliemann 

 began relatively late in life to take up the study of lan- 

 guages. By assiduous application he mastered one 

 after another until he came to regard the acquisition of a 

 new language as a mere pastime. Yet he explicitly 

 disclaimed any exceptional endowment of memory. 

 He believed that any average person could do what he 

 had done by making such application as he had made. 

 Doubtless he modestly under-estimated his own powers, 

 but at least it is certain that he would not have known of 

 his exceptional capacity had he not, almost by accident, 

 put it to the test. And note, if you please, the stren- 

 uous methods by which he achieved success. "In 

 order to improve my position," he says, "I applied my- 

 self to the study of modern languages. My annual 



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