Page:Jesuit Education.djvu/514

494 must train the whole man. An old adage has it: "Tantum scimus quantum memoria retinemus." Boyhood is the best season for memory work, and also the time when that faculty should be thoroughly drilled. Professor Schnell, quoted by Father Kleutgen, says: "The school of the second period of childhood (10 to 14) is before everything else a school of memory, and during it more will and must be given to and absorbed by the memory than during any other period of life." And Father Pachtler observes: "The lower the class the more is exercise of the memory to be insisted on." Again: "The mental power which is first developed is the memory. It is the strongest in boyhood and in the first years of youth, and decreases gradually with the development of the body, until, in old age, it is confined to the impressions produced in youth, and is remarkably weak in retaining impressions fixedly. We must strike the iron whilst it is hot, and so make use of boyhood for the acquisition of those subjects which require the most memory, the learning of grammar and the languages which are the foundation of a college career."

If it is asked what should be learned by heart, it is not easy to give an adequate answer. This much is certain that the more important rules of grammar must be committed to memory; then choice passages from the best authors in English and Latin, and a few from the Greek. Among the finest loci memoriales in Latin are the orations of Livy, v. g. that of Hannibal to his soldiers, the exordia of the orations of Cicero, striking passages from Virgil, some odes of Horace,