In our early studies in mental science, we were told that the faculties or capacities of the mind were tersely expressed in seeing, feeling and knowing. There were no limitations placed on our capacities to see or perceive, for through this faculty the realm of the imagination was reached and feeling struck the sensitive chord of our being whose secret home is in the imagination, so its depth could not be sounded. But to know - that was beyond belief, and here there were limitations. Unfoldment has brought knowledge. It has increased as we unfolded - it is ever increasing - but we only know when we can bring forward the proofs. Just here it is to be noted that these proofs, though clear to us, may not be patent to another. As presented, they may force belief in him, but he too must make the tests before he can claim to know.

If this reasoning will lead my reader to believe that man's mental powers have only been toyed with as yet - that memory's cabinet is practically untabulated and at best loosely arranged - that our chief discipline begins there, that we may have a wealth of facts (supply) to draw from, that logic and reason may assume no false premises, then we may rejoice to learn of new methods to help perfect (shall I say) the tabulation of the contents stored in the pigeon holes of memory's cabinet, that its treasures may always be ready for us as calls or drafts are made.

That somewhere in the storehouse of memory every word, idea or thought we have placed there is lodged, has been proven to us over and over again. Many of them we do not care to remember - we never even tried to give them a permanent place; still, as some new scene is presented, or some story related, we clearly recall without effort incidents of the long ago which we had consigned to the closed chamber of Forgetfulness. We all have had enough experience of this kind to convince us that forgetfulness is only transitory. Somewhere in memory's cabinet all we have ever studied, or read, or seen, or thought, is held (perhaps I should say guarded); but to find these mental treasures when we would - that is the problem. If we have occasion, and due notice in advance, to recite a poem learned years ago, we are prone to turn to the volume where it may be found and read it over and over again until we know memory will respond on the occasion. Is this the best way?

As my subject is so vast, I can only hope to present in a single essay some preliminary discipline to start an investigator on a few lines only, in this work of tabulating the riches in memory's storehouse. What I have already done in my experiments assures me that complete tabulation is not a dream or a transcendentalism. The intellectual progress I have referred to among our young students proves they have better command here than students had thirty years ago. The discipline of the schools has brought this about in an indirect way. May it not be that the time has now come when more direct training can be used to advantage, though that training be purely voluntary, and each individual enter upon it alone?

Primarily, I charge the student to repeated self-examinations until he convinces himself that forgetfulness only expresses a relative condition. It means simply that memory does not respond to the will at that particular moment. An hour or perhaps a week or month after memory may respond to that call, even though the call has not been repeated. We have all gone through such experiences. May it be that there is a labyrinth of stations through which the message was forced to pass before the home office could be reached and the response sent to consciousness? May it be that beyond our own selfhoods are spirit forces that receive the message and directly attend to its transmission? Had our loved household American poet pierced this center before he wrote:

"The Great Spirit, the Creator,

Sends them thither on His errand,

Sends them to us with His message."?

Socrates knew his demon, and Plato gave the philosophy of Socrates immortal life. Great poems, great dramas, great operas, have been composed through intuitions called inspirations. Novelists have dreamed of plots to stories before touching pen to paper that recorded them. Perhaps, beside the holding of every word, idea or thought heard, learned or treasured in this life, the tablets of past memories are safely recorded there as well. The Hindus claim this self-evident - the Japanese regard it in their philosophy as an axiom; and, if this be true, then it is memory of that past, through dreams, that has furnished poets, novelists and musical composers over and over again, with the woof to hold the brilliant mental pictures out of which was fashioned the dramatic scenes genius uses to symbol its purposes. The Hindu phillosophy suggests methods to awaken to conscious ness past memories. If one can learn first how to draw from memory on call all gleaned in his present incarnation, it may advance him so that he can learn to recall past memories of other existences. Our work is not, at this point, to discuss whether or not there have been re-births. If there have been, and this philosophy is rapidly gaining converts, its absolute proof will some day be found through the faculty of memory. If man gains control of memory, as herein suggested as possible, it will be a natural sequence to follow to that apparently tightly sealed compartment of the past. If found, opened, and its treasures disclosed, then man will have attained to the height where Eastern philosophers long ago placed him, for then "no being can be greater than man."

To record now some of my experiments that have convinced me of the truth of the statements I have made relating to control of the treasures in this storehouse of memory, and to suggest a few of the methods I have tried and proven as valuable aids to this end, I come, at this late moment, abreast of my subject:

First, in my silent hours I have quietly but firmly held the thought or sent the suggestion to consciousness that to forget was impossible - a truth we all accept, but one we thoughtlessly deny repeatedly in our ordinary conversation. Here is a habit to be broken - a habit that is detrimental to the development of a ready memory, and a habit that is pernicious, because we are affirmatively asserting as facts what we know are not. He who says I have forgotten - it has entirely passed from memory - is not speaking truth.