Part 1 (1/2)

The Trained Memory

by Warren Hilton

CHAPTER I

THE ELEMENTS OF MEMORY

[Sidenote: _Four Special Memory Processes_]

You have learned of the sense-perceptive and judicial processes by which your e of the outside world You come now to a study of the phenomenon of memory, the instrue, the agency that has power to resurrect the buried past or power to enfold us in a Paradise of dreams more perfect than reality

In the broadest sense, memory is the faculty of the mind by which we (1) _retain_, (2) _recall_, (3) _picture to the nize_ past experiences

Memory involves, therefore, four elenition_

THE MENTAL TREASURE VAULT AND ITS LOST COMBINATION

[Illustration: Decorative Header]

CHAPTER II

THE MENTAL TREASURE VAULT AND ITS LOST COMBINATION

[Sidenote: _What Everyone Thinks_]

Almost everyone sees that we can voluntarily recall; that memory, in other words, is limited to the power of voluntary reproduction

This is a profound error It is an inexcusable error The daily papers are constantly reporting cases of the lapse and restoration oftruth on this subject

[Sidenote: _Causes of Forgetfulness_]

It is plain enough that the memory _seems_ decidedly limited in its scope This is because our power of voluntary recall is decidedly limited

But it does not follow simply because we are without the power to deliberately recall certain experiences that all mental trace of those experiences is lost to us

_Those experiences that we are unable to recall are those that we disregarded when they occurred because they possessed no special interest for us They are there, but no mental associations or connections with power to awaken the with ”Half an Eye”_]

Things are continually happening all around us that we see with but ”half an eye” They are in the ”fringe” of consciousness, and we deliberately ignore thes come to us in the forans, but no effort of the will is needed to ignore them We are absolutely impervious to them and unconscious of them because by the selection of our life interests we have closed the doors against thee” of consciousness or entirely outside of consciousness, these unperceived sensations will be found to be sensory ies that have no connection with the present subject of thought They therefore attract, and we spare them, no part of our attention

Just as each of our individual sense-organs selects fro upon the surface of the body only those waves to the velocity of which it is attuned, so each one of us as an integral personality selects from the stream of sensory experiences only those particular objects of attention that are in soht

[Sidenote: _The Man on Broadway_]