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. 289
more congenial. " YVith respect to my employment as president,
[a judicial title in France,] I have an upright heart - I comprehend with ease the nature of the business; but of the forms
of the court I understand nothing, though I took pains to acquire that knowledge; and what dispirits me most at it is, that
I observe in some blockheads the very talent I seem unable to
attain."
I should, perhaps, have taken an earlier opportunity of remarking, that in contrasting, as I have occasionally done in this
section, the species of Memory possessed by philosophers with
that possessed by the vulgar and illiterate, I evidently have in
view those effects only which their respective pursuits bave a
tendency to produce on the intellectual character. 3M[any exceptions to our general conclusions may be expected in particular instances; nor does there seem to be any impossibility in
the nature of things to unite, by a proper education, the advantages of both kinds of M1emory. That incapacity, for example,
of attending to trifling details, of which Montesquieu complains
in the above quotation, and which is one great source of what
is generally called a bad Mlemzory, is undoubtedly a most serious
inconvenience to all who have to mingle in the business of the
world; and although it is justly overlooked in those whose
talents and acquirements raise them much above the common
level, yet it can scarcely be guarded against enough by all
those who have any concern in the education of youth. To
enable a person to command his attention, at all times, to whatever object is before him, whether trifling or important, so that
"whatsoever his hand findeth to do, he may do it with all his
night," is one of the most important habits that can be communiicated to his mind. And it would form a most valuable article
illn a systematical treatise on education, to point out the means
by which this habit may be cultivated, or the contrary habits of
inattention corrected where they have unfortunately been contracted.
The following judicious remark of MAdr. Knox, (in his Treatise
on Education,) while it throws some additional light on these
varieties of Memory which have been now under our consider25