William Atkinson - The Essential Works of William Walker Atkinson - 50+ Books in One Edition

The Chinese have a different letter or word­sign for every word, and the Chinese scholar carries thousands of these word­signs in his mind, without any trouble. Our own children are doing the same thing on a smaller scale by reason of the new system of reading now in vogue in our schools. When we, their parents, learned to read we would first begin to spell the word before we could read it, and it was a long time before we reached “Con­stan­ti­no­ple,” but now our little ones are taught the shape or general appearance of the word, instead of its separate letters, or sound, and to them “Constantinople” is as easy to read as “Cat” (and “Cat” as hard to spell as “Constantinople,” sometimes).

Similar results are recorded of musicians, many of whom have been able to reproduce page after page of music they had heard but once or twice. A celebrated composer, while but a boy, is said to have listened to a celebrated Mass sung at a monastery, the score of which was religiously guarded by the monks. Upon his return to his room he reproduced the entire Mass on paper, without the mistake of a single note. The monks forgave the theft in their admiration of the remarkable feat. Lesser feats of memorizing music are not uncommon. And mind you, it is not alone the faculty of memory that renders these things possible, but the developed faculty of seeing and hearing things clearly and distinctly.

There are Jews living to­day who can repeat by heart, from any given word, the whole of the Talmud, which is a library in itself. Leland tells a tale of a Hindu who did not understand English at all, who having fifty lines of “Paradise Lost” read to him, repeated it accurately from sound, and then rehearsed it backwards. In earlier times, when books were costly, men were dependent upon their memories, and many developed memories which would now be regarded as marvelous, but which were then quite the ordinary thing, possessed by all who made any pretense to study. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, students flocked to the universities in thousands. Books were scarce and costly, and the ancient custom of committing whole works to memory still prevailed. Schliemann, in his Ilios , tells us that his memory was bad originally, but he so perfected it by an indomitable will and hard work, that at last he learned a new language every six months, so as to write and speak it perfectly. And all this while he was making a fortune in the wholesale grocery business.

Japanese children pass at least two years in studying mere letters or signs before they begin to read. This is much harder than anything known in our schools, and involves the exercise of memory only. This training has given the Japanese wonderful memories. One of their writers, Hirata Atsutane, compiled a great work on the myths and legends of his country, and is said to have composed the first three volumes of the text and several volumes of the introduction, without referring to a single book from which he had drawn his information.

Grotius and Pascal are said to have forgotten nothing that they had ever read or thought. Cardinal Mezzofanti, who is said to have mastered over a hundred different languages, declared that he never forgot a word that he had once learned. There is a story on record of an old village grave­digger who could remember the day of every funeral in the churchyard for thirty­five years, the age of the deceased, and the names of those attending the funeral.

Seneca was able to repeat two thousand disconnected words after having heard them once, in the same order as they were given, simply by his natural powers of memory. His friend, Porteus Latio, never forgot any of the speeches he had ever delivered, and never found his memory fail for a single word. Cyneas, an ambassador to the Romans from King Pyrrhus, learned in a single day the names of the assembled people so well that the next day he was able to salute the senate and the populace, each by his own name. Pliny says that Cyrus knew the name of every soldier in his army. Francis Luarez could repeat all of St. Augustine’s works, making quotations and citing the number of the page and the line where they could be found. Themistocles could call by their names the 20,000 citizens of Athens. Muretus tells of a young Corsican pupil who could repeat backward and forward 36,000 unconnected words, after having heard them but once. He said that he could do better, but the men who were reading to him became exhausted. There came to this Corsican a young man whose memory was wretched. The Corsican instructed him with such success that in a week or two the pupil could repeat five hundred words, backward and forward.

Magliabechi, the great Florentine bibliophile, had a wonderful memory for books and libraries. He knew the location, shelf, and number of every book in his own great library, and of the other great libraries of the world. Once the Grand Duke of Tuscany asked him where he could find a copy of a certain rare book, and he replied that there was only one copy in existence, and that copy was “in the library of the Grand Seignior, in Constantinople, on the seventh shelf of the third case to the right as you enter.” Joseph Scaliger committed to memory the Iliad and Odyssey, in less than a month, and in three months had mastered the entire list of the Greek poets, and committed them to memory. This man is said to have often complained of his poor memory!

By practice one may develop the power of concentration and attention as applied to thoughts as well as other things. The same rule and reason maintains in each case. In subsequent chapters we will take up this phase of the subject. But our attention will first be directed to the development of the faculty of acquiring impressions through the senses of Seeing and Hearing.

Table of Content

Treating of the receiving of impressions through the sense of sight—The vital importance of the training of the eye to receive impressions clearly and distinctly— The benefit of such training in every day and business life—The importance of such training in Memory Culture—Showing that the majority of people “look at” rather than “see” things—Interesting examples and illustrations are given, showing how this faculty has been developed by those who have devoted attention to the subject, and the general rules governing the development and cultivation of this faculty of the mind are given.

IT HAS been well said that “the eyes are the windows of the soul,” and it is indeed true that through these windows the mind receives the greatest number of impressions, and those impressions of the very finest quality. And it will be noticed that the subject of Memory Culture is perhaps more closely allied to the training of the mind to correctly register the impressions received through the medium of the eye than the cultivation of any other of the senses.

We can scarcely too strongly urge upon our readers the vital importance of the training of the Eye to receive correct impressions clearly and distinctly. Such training, and the consequent development, will result to the benefit of the man or woman in any walk of life; in any profession, business or trade. It is not merely the artist or sculptor who needs the aid of the trained eye, but every artisan, business man, or professional man who has not developed along these lines, suffers every day for his negligence.

The artist cannot reproduce unless he observes correctly; the writer cannot describe scenes, persons or character unless he has the sharpened faculty of observation; the artisan needs no one to tell him of the importance of seeing things. There is no occupation the followers of which are not benefited by trained power of observation.