Super memory trick you can learn

Chapter 4 Amazing Memory
The importance of cultivating the abilities that play a key role in our mental development cannot be overemphasized.

—Dr. Watts

In endowing men with memory, nature shows her usual partiality and injustice.For example, only a very small number of people have a very good memory, and the vast majority of the rest have a less than ideal memory, although the vast majority of people have an inherent good potential in this area.However, in terms of human talents, if they are properly used and exercised, if your original talent score is five points, then you will get an extra five points; if your original talent score is two points, you will get an extra five points. Two points; if you ignore your talent, then it is wasted, and your original talent score is one point, then you will always be one point.Therefore, the innate memory of human beings can be developed and even multiplied if it is properly trained.At present, as far as the practical value of memory is concerned, the gap between people depends more on the methods they use to exercise memory than on the strength or weakness of their own talents.

In this chapter, we will focus on people throughout the ages who were powerfully endowed with memory, and those who were lucky enough to improve their memory through proper training.There may be few among our readers who possess abilities similar to those we are about to describe, but this passage helps to reveal what we already know: the development of memory is indeed endless.If this judgment is true, no matter how bad the natural memory is, it will motivate everyone to insist on daily and systematic exercise to improve memory.

Lord Macaulay has an amazing memory.When he was only three or four years old, he could remember whole pages of what he had read.At that time, his memory was like a camera, which could mechanically "photograph" the contents of the entire page.The maid in his family said that when he was talking to people, he could quote long paragraphs from the book.When he was a kid, talking on the phone with his father one afternoon, he even used a line from Scott's "Last Bard Song" and no one ever mentioned it to him through these sentences.While the children older than he were still babbling, he was already quietly absorbing the nourishment of the treasure house of human knowledge.When they got home, McCawley would go to his mother's bedside—she was ill at the time—sit down and recite long poems to her, one by one, until his mother got tired of listening. up.After middle age, there was a meeting of the British National Museum. Lord Macaulay used his memory to list all the senior debaters who had appeared in Cambridge University in the past 100 years on four standard sheets of paper, and gave them dates and names. Everyone's college.These names were originally printed on the Cambridge University calendar.Other similar deeds also show his excellent memory.He once said that if the surviving copies of Paradise Lost and The Pilgrim's Progress were destroyed, he could restore them from memory.

Maria Becki, librarian of Florence, was also a literary prodigy of his day.He has read extensively and memorized extensively. He can not only quote from many sources, but even remember the page numbers and paragraphs clearly.In the end, he almost forgot about social ethics and sanitary conditions, and almost died among the piles of books.

Jedediah Buxton, who had a remarkable memory, died in 1774.Although as a principal, he can hardly even write his own name.Once he remembered the number of beers he had drunk since he was twelve, and even the names of the gentlemen who had given him drinks.According to him, it was 12 pints in total, or "mouths" as he called it, because some alcoholics can drink a bottle of wine in one breath.Although he had learned little mathematics, and had no aid of anything but the multiplication table, and pen and paper, he was able to do this, multiply five or six digits, and in less time than Most arithmetic experts are short.The results of his calculations are stored in his brain, and he will repeat them a month later if necessary.And he can stop the calculation and continue it without error a week, a month, or even a few months later.

Dr. Abernathy also has an amazing memory.One day, he invited several friends to celebrate his wife's birthday. An idealistic poet friend wrote some hymns for his wife.The doctor listened very carefully, and suddenly he explained: "Forget it, this is really a big joke, these poems were not written by you, I have memorized them by heart a long time ago." When the poem was recited, everyone present was too surprised to speak.The pseudo-poet was taken aback, confused and exasperated.The doctor happily introduced his super memory ability, and he was able to retell the complete original poems proposed by everyone present.

We can find a wealth of accounts, both ancient and modern, of people with exceptional memories, some of which are almost unbelievable.Just like the example of Principal Goldsmith, we are amazed that such a small head can hold so much knowledge.This is what Cicero says, commenting on the memory of Diodeticus, Hertencius, and Cineus.Cicero's memory is also very good. He once went to Rome as an ambassador. On the first day of his arrival, when he talked with the Senate members and jazz, he could directly call each other's name.After walking out of the auction house, Hertensius was still able to count the items at the auction one by one from the back to the front.

Mr. Stanton, Secretary of War during the American Civil War, also has a remarkable memory.During the first half of 1868, Dickens was on a book tour of the country, and one evening, dined with Charles Sumner, with Mr. Stanton present.To Dickens' amazement, Mr. Stanton was able to retell any chapter in all of Dickens' works from memory.Mr. Stanton explained that during the war he had developed the invariable habit of reading Dickens before bed.

Here is an instance of Dr. John Leighton: "When he went to Calcutta, a case arose there, the conduct of which depended largely on the wording of an Act of Parliament, but the relevant Act for that jurisdiction was lost. John Leighton happened to have an opportunity to look at the Act before leaving England, so he undertook the task of reconstructing it from memory. A copy of the Act was obtained from England about a year later, and people It was found that John Wyden's restored version was almost identical to the copy."

It is said that Cyrus the Great could blurt out the name of any soldier in his army.The Roman Emperor Orso attributed his success to the throne to his amazing memory.When he was a common officer and a comrade-in-arms of his soldiers, he knew every soldier by name, and he could call everyone by their name properly.The soldiers felt very honored to have received such attention from him. They believed that the emperor could remember his own name so accurately, so he would definitely not treat him badly in the future.Therefore, they strongly support him and help him defeat his opponents.

Seneca, a prominent senator in Rome and a philosopher, said of memory: "Age has hurt me a lot, and age has taken away much of what I once had. It blurs my memory. My sight has dulled my hearing, my nerves have been dulled. The rest I have to say about memory, which is the most vulnerable part of the soul, and memory is the first to be damaged as people grow old; so far, I can still memorize 2000 names in sequence."

John Fuller, a land agent in Norfolk, could write a sermon or a speech exactly as soon as he heard it.There was a man named Robert Dillon who in the morning could retell six columns of news in a newspaper he had read the night before.George Watson does a better job, though in other ways he's more of a goofy little bumpkin who can tell the date of every day of his adult life and what he did that day.

Richard Posen was a professor at the University of Cambridge, known for his erudition and superb memory.He can freely quote books, chapters, poems and important sentences of ancient Greek writers.When he was teaching at Eton College, when he was going to Latin class, a boy tried to play tricks on him, stole his Latin textbook "Horace", and stuffed him with an English version. of.However, long before Posen went to Eton, he knew "Horace" by heart, and the schoolmate's trick did not cause Posen the slightest panic.He started to give lectures. He opened the English book in his hand without any hesitation, and then started to give lectures. He proceeded methodically and analyzed Latin in English freely.His teaching assistant noticed something strange, and he and the boys asked Posen what version of "Horace" he was holding. "When I was learning, I used the version used by the Dauphin of France," he said. "That version is very different." Posen replied, "You don't seem to be reading the same version as me. Let me take a look at this." This book." Of course, the truth surfaced.Posen also said he would be delighted to find other students in the same environment.

Mezzofanti is known to know more than 38 languages ​​and 30 or so dialects, and once, after a full 24 hours of study, he was able to use a language he hadn't heard before and communicated with Any language known is quite different from free speech.Many years ago, there was an old beggar in Stirling named Alec the Blind who memorized the complete Bible by heart.He can freely say which chapter, chapter or volume the scriptures come from, or vice versa, and he can also correctly say the sentences of each chapter.

Wesley mentioned in his diary that a young Irish missionary had such a good memory and knew the Greek New Testament so well that whenever he mentioned anything in the Greek New Testament, A word, and he'll immediately tell you which other pages it's used on, and the difference in meaning for each of them.It is said that after Charles Dickens walked down a street he visited for the first time, he could tell you in order the name of each clerk and the business of each shop.

In Louisiana in the old days, many of the legislators were Creole-speaking, and they spoke almost no English.

In a state where Creole is heavily spoken, bills in the state legislature are promulgated in both English and French, and all speeches in the Senate are given in both languages.For many years, General Horatio Davis of New Orleans, a Senate clerk, translated all the speeches: after hearing one speech for an hour or two, it was immediately translated accurately into another. language and cannot use any annotations.No one else is good enough for the job, and the expectations of such a well-known job are so high that few candidates dare challenge it.

It is said that the commander-in-chief of Athens, Mistocles, knew the names of each of the more than 2 residents in the city of Athens.Murphy, a famous chess player, can play several games at the same time, each playing a unique game, without him having to stare at any one of them.It is said that the great thinker Pascal could never forget the known knowledge and any kind of material he had read.It is said that Hugo, Grotius, Leibniz and Owen, each of them can remember Virgil's "Aeneid" by heart.The great critic Joseph Scaliger used to say that he had a bad memory, yet, with complaints of a bad memory, he devoted twenty-one days to the study of Homer as a whole; For 21 months, he studied other Greek poets as a whole in the way he liked; 3 years later, he succeeded in figuring out the general scope of the authors of the classical period by memory.

"Memory Superman" Conor Thomson, living in London in 1820.He has an amazing memory.From the basement all the way to the attic, he would pay attention to the names of the objects, and then he could make a list of all the objects based on his impressions.

In his book Psychological Investigations, Sir Benjamin Brody cites the famous example of Suarez.It is said that Suarez can recall all the works of Augustin.These books include 11 large folios, which give us some hints that the capacity of human memory can at least reach enough to memorize them in their entirety and store them in the brain as a whole.It is said that if someone misquotes Augustine's quotations, Suarez can immediately correct them and tell him what the original text is.

Woodover was the publisher of Junius' works and editor of the Morning Chronicle in London.Woodver was at a debate with his brother, and without taking any notes, he accurately paraphrased the next morning.He is called "Memory Superman".

Ben Johnson said of himself: "I like to exercise my memory by retelling the books I have read and the poems of some close friends." When Avicenna was only 10 years old, he could Memorize the entire Qur'an by rote.Justus Lipsius once bet his life that he could tell Tacitus' History without error.

The following is quoted from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.Dantes once talked with the learned and shrewd Elder Faria, who once said: "In my study in Rome, there are nearly 5000 books. However, after reading them many times, I found that by familiarizing with 150 From this well-chosen book, one can grasp a complete compendium of all human knowledge, or at least a compendium of all that is useful and worth learning. I have spent three years studying and studying these 3 books until I have They are already familiar to me. Therefore, after I entered the prison, with a little effort, I could recall the content of the book, just like a book stand in front of my eyes. Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Livy, Tower Citus, Strada, Jordanes, Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Machiavelli, and Bossuet, the entire works of these writers, I can recite to you in full. Note , and here I'm just listing the most important names that interest me in that section."

These extraordinary memory abilities are not necessarily related to talent.Ordinary people also have this kind of memory ability, but due to some physiological changes, they are called "memory enhancement" or "memory enhancement" by doctors.When people have a fever, fanaticism, joy, hypnosis and hysteria, they often have supernormal memory.At the moment when a person is about to die, this kind of extraordinary memory also occurs from time to time.In just a few seconds, the experience of a person's life emerges in the consciousness at an extremely fast speed, and those things that have happened but have long been forgotten will also appear in the mind.In fever, words spoken in childhood, now long forgotten and long out of use, are activated and awakened again.A sane man was crossing a railway in the countryside. At this moment, a full-speed high-speed train approached him quickly, and he only had time to lie down on the open space between the two railway tracks.As the train whizzed by above him, the sense of impending danger washed over him, making the scene so vivid to him.The order in which these scenes appear is the same as that described in "The Doomsday Book".

These extraordinary memories don't only happen to people with special talents or under special conditions. No matter what class they belong to or what nationality they come from, after certain training, everyone can obtain this kind of memory.The natives of India have such remarkable memories that their pharmacists have been known to memorize hundreds of jars, stacked one after the other up to the ceiling, none of them labeled.However, when he needed a certain medicine, he had no hesitation in reaching for the right bottle.Ordinary laundresses, with their children, go door to door to collect dirty laundry.After these clothes are transported to the river to be cleaned, they are individually wrapped and sent back to their owners. There is never a mistake.

Farmers in the Brittany region of France still remember and are able to retell orally the traditions of their national ancestors.The fidelity of the English to customary traditions and the beliefs of their ancestors is shown in the remnants of Celtic language and eccentric customs.Through carefully and faithfully retold legends and stories, English peasants established a pattern in which they always heard relevant stories.If the story told by the outsider deviates from the correct version, they will always correct it immediately: "No, this is how the story begins", and then tell the version of the story that is usually used.

In the 13th century, when the Bible was banned and destroyed as soon as it was found, clergymen had entire books of scriptures in their heads to recite in their meetings.Even a religious woman can recite paragraph after paragraph with aptness and accuracy.The Lionelians can neither read nor write, yet they can recite the entire Book of Job by heart.

The great Scottish philosopher Dugald Stewart was a man with an astonishingly extraordinary memory.He said: "A superficial view of this issue is that the most primitive differences between people are in their ability to remember, and this difference is huge. However, there are good reasons to believe that these differences in It is usually exaggerated by people. Moreover, the fundamental difference in intelligence between people is not enough to cause such a large gap in memory. The reason why human beings are so different in thinking may be due to people's different The difference in study habits or observation points is of course also caused by human innate factors and accidental growth environment."

There is enough evidence to show that with the average human memory ability, it is more than enough to memorize and easily retell the Bible.

GC Leland said: "It is recorded that there is a sect that requires believers to recite the Bible verbatim. Dragmanov, a contemporary historian who specializes in this sect, claims that none of their followers is not knows the New Testament by heart; and a bishop has avowed that there is not a single man in his own diocese of 4000 faithful who cannot memorize the whole of the Bible without error."

In order to illustrate that ordinary people can also have a strong memory, we quote an interesting article from the Voice of San Francisco:

In an Italian restaurant in O'Farrell Street there was a waiter named Marignia who had a better memory than either the mythical Memnon or the depressed office-seeker.Even better, besides having an astonishing super memory, he is also a very rich man.

He was a little man with an incredible memory, and I had heard plenty of stories about this waiter's incredible memory before I decided to test them out for myself. "Why!" wondered a Bohemian friend, when we talked about some of Marini's deeds, "Just as 'Eyeless Devil' Chris Buckley couldn't forget a single voice, Marini It also seems impossible for Ya to forget any face or even a fish. Not only can he remember you years later, but he can also remember what food you ate at your last meal. Don't you believe it? Okay , you can try it yourself, and then verify it yourself!"

The most demanding test ever was put on the little waiter's memory.It was Christmas Eve in 1891, and two very hungry journalists visited the restaurant where Marignia was located, all exhausted.There were hundreds of people dining there, and very few people ordered the same food.

"Hello, Shortpenhill!" Marinia quickly appeared at my friend's side and greeted him, "Is it the usual meal tonight, or is it the same as last time?"

To make the test fairer, Schottpenhill insisted that I order, which I did.The meals are very tasty.I can hardly remember the scene at that time, I forgot that such a person exists in the world, he is like Memnon in the myth and legend, incarnated as a humble little waiter.

It was Christmas Eve, 1892, exactly one year since we last dined at Marignia's.When we were thinking about where to eat, it was Shortpenhill that prompted me again.

"Did you eat? No. Well, let's go and see the Marignac. I'll bet on a bottle of extra dry wine that the waiter can remember what we've had I will report the menu to you one by one."

I agreed to bet with him, and half an hour later we were sitting in the restaurant on O'Farrell Street.Soon, Marinha appeared in front of us, holding a large bottle of red wine in his hand.

"Good morning!" he greeted Shortpenhill, and then he added to me, "How are you? It's been a year since you were last here."

His memory has been initially confirmed.

"Well, gentlemen," he went on, "do you have your usual meal, or is it the same as last time?"

"Same as last time," replied Shortpenhill.Then, as plates of the same delicious food were served in front of us in the same order, our own memories of that meal 12 months earlier began to become clear and vivid.It started with a large bottle of Burgundy, two shot glasses and lots of crushed ice.Shrimp salad, oxtail soup, grilled flounder, roasted teal and rum omelet, all served piece by piece in the order they were a year ago, without needing to say a word to Marignia.

"Last time you ordered Oregon cheese," explains the dining wizard, before ordering something sweet, "but now there's a new brand of cheese that's even better!"

"We still want the original brand!" I replied.

At this time, I began to be surprised by this man's memory, and I realized that I was going to lose the game.

But a lot more happens before the first meal is replicated in its entirety.However, Marignia was up to the occasion and without hesitation, he served black coffee, cognac and cigars of the same brand in the order we had previously ordered from the menu.

Shotpenhill smiled triumphantly for a long while as he enjoyed the spoils that Marinia's great memory had helped him win. "Don't be depressed," he reassured me, holding the sparkling red wine to the light, "I lost the same bet two years ago. You know, I won it back in a way. gone."

A few years later, I have a better understanding of Marinha.He worked in the same restaurant for 30 years, and he invested his savings wisely and prudently.In addition to owning multiple properties and stocks, he also owns a large food factory in San Francisco, and many of the delicious meals he serves to regular restaurant customers every day are directly provided by this food factory.

"Yes, he is nothing short of a miracle!" said the restaurant owner when asked about Marinha, "and, although he is very rich, you cannot make him give up his job as a waiter. As he himself said Said, he was born a waiter, and he will remain a waiter until man has no more need for food."

(End of this chapter)