Artificial Memory

In travelling along a road, the sight of the more remarkable scenes we

meet with, frequently puts us in mind of the subjects we were thinking

or talking of when we last saw them. Such facts, which were perfectly

familiar, even to the vulgar, might very naturally suggest the

possibility of assisting the memory, by establishing a connexion

between the ideas we wish to remember, and certain sensible objects,

which have be n found from experience to make a permanent impression

on the mind. It was said, that a person contrived a method of

committing to memory the sermons which he was accustomed to hear, by

fixing his attention, during the different heads of the discourse, on

different compartments of the roof of the church, in such a manner as,

that when he afterwards saw the roof, or remembered the order in which

its compartments were disposed, he recollected the method which the

preacher had observed in treating his subject. This contrivance was

perfectly analogous to the topical memory of the ancients; an art

which, whatever be the opinion we entertain of its use, is certainly

entitled, in a high degree, to the praise of ingenuity.



Suppose you fix in your memory the different apartments in some very

large building, and that you had accustomed yourself to think of these

apartments always in the same invariable order. Suppose further, that,

in preparing yourself for a public discourse, in which you had

occasion to treat of a great variety of particulars, you were anxious

to fix in your memory the order you proposed to observe in the

communication of your ideas. It is evident, that by a proper division

of your subject into heads, and by connecting each head with a

particular apartment, (which you could easily do, by conceiving

yourself to be sitting in the apartment while you were studying the

part of your discourse you mean to connect with it,) the habitual

order in which these apartments occurred to your thoughts, would

present to you in the proper arrangement, and without any effort on

your part, the ideas of which you were to treat. It is also obvious,

that very little practice would enable you to avail yourself of this

contrivance, without any embarrassment or distraction of your

attention.