Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. By Dugald Stewart. Rev. and abridged, with critical and explanatory notes, for the use of colleges and schools. By Francis Bowen ...

MEMORY. 271
respect to this faculty, which I am now endeavoring to reduce
to their just standard.
The characteristics of a good Memory. - As the great purpose
to which this faculty is subservient, is to enable us to collect, and
to retain, for the future regulation of our conduct, the results of
our past experience; it is evident that the degree of perfection
which it attains in the case of different persons, must vary,
first, with the facility of making the original acquisition;
secondly, with the permanence of the acquisition; and thirdly,
with the quickness or readiness with which the individual is
able, on particular occasions, to apply it to use. The qualities
therefore, of a good Memory are, in the first place, to be susceptible; secondly, to be retentive; and thirdly, to be ready.
It is but rarely that these three qualities are united in the
same person. We often, indeed, meet with a Miemory which is
at once susceptible and ready; but I doubt much, if such memories be commonly very retentive. For the same set of habits
which are favorable to the two first qualities, are adverse to the
third. Those individuals, for example, who, with a view to
conversation, make a constant business of informing themselves
with respect to the popular topics of the day, or of turning
over the ephemeral publications subservient to the amusement
or to the politics of the times, are naturally led to cultivate a
susceptibility and readiness of memory, but have no inducement
to aim at that permanent retention of selected ideas, which enables
the scientific student to combine the most remote materials, and
to concentrate, at will, on a particular object, all the scattered
lights of his experience, and of his reflections. Such men (as
far as my observation has reached) seldom possess a familiar or
correct acquaintance even with those classical remains of our
own earlier writers, which have ceased to furnish topics of discourse to the circles of fashion. A stream of novelties is perpetually passing through their minds; and the faint impressions
which it leaves, soon vanish to make way for others, - like the
traces which the ebbing tide leaves upon the sand. Nor is this
all. In proportion as the associating principles which lay the
foundation of susceptibility and readiness predominate in the