Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/207

 say, that our memory stands under two contending influences, that of the energy of the representative faculty on the one hand, and that of the quantity of representations occupying that faculty on the other. The less energy there is in the faculty, the fewer must be the representations, and conversely. This explains the impaired memory of habitual novel-readers, for it is with them as with men of genius : the multitude of representations following rapidly upon each other, leaves no time or patience for repetition and practice ; only, in novels, these representations are not the readers own, but other people's thoughts and combinations quickly succeeding each other, and the readers themselves are wanting in that which, in genius, counterbalances repetition. The whole thing besides is subject to the corrective, that we all have most memory for that which interests us, and least for that which does not. Great minds therefore are apt to forget in an incredibly short time the petty affairs and trifling occurrences of daily life and the commonplace people with whom they come in contact, whereas they have a wonderful recollection of those things which have importance in themselves and for them.

It is, however, on the whole, easy to understand that we should more readily remember such series of representations as are connected together by the thread of one or more of the above-mentioned species of reasons and consequences, than such as have no connection with one another, but only with our will according to the law of motives ; that is to say, those which are arbitrarily grouped. For, in the former, the fact that we know the formal part a priori, saves us half the trouble ; and this probably gave rise to Plato's doctrine, that all learning is mere remembering.

As far as possible we ought to try and reduce all that we wish to incorporate in our memory to a perceptible image,