NewThoughtLibrary.com / DivineLibrary.org

practice to be recalled with scarcely an effort; yet when the occasion has passed, it at once and entirely slips from the mind. To insist early and strenuously on the tasks assigned the memory is necessary to its efficiency. Yet in spite of cultivation, there will be very striking differences in this power. Some will retain lengthy discourses after one or two readings, while others can scarcely repeat with accuracy the shortest production.

A powerful memory is a great aid to other faculties, though its strength does not seem necessarily connected with the strength of any other portion of our intellectual endowments. Memory is liable to usurp the office of reflection, and to overshadow the native growth of the mind with the luxuriant products of other intellects. Indeed, there come these compensations to a memory comparatively weak, that we are thrown back more habitually on our own resources; that the thoughts find free play, the statements of others on the same subject, and their methods of treatment not being vividly present; and that we make all acquisitions minister to the vigor and growth of thought, to its nutritive processes rather than to those formal possessions which are held in a somewhat lifeless way in the memory. We are thus compelled to enlarge and develop our strength by consumption and digestion rather than by retention. Yet with a truly vigorous mind, that cannot be overborne and burdened by the thoughts of others, a strong memory is a most valuable power.

Memory is cultivated in several ways; first, by persistency and vigor of purpose in its use, by requiring positively what has been distinctly committed to it. If its burdens can be made wise, definite, and reasonable, and the mind return patiently to the effort of bearing them, the memory will take up its tasks with increasing ease, and become more and more trustworthy. If, on the other hand, material