e by a very
simple experiment a few times repeated--an experiment which I
clearly describe and which has been tested and verified beyond
all denial--cause himself to remain during the following day in a
perfectly calm or cheerful state of mind; and this condition may, by
means of repetition and practice, be raised or varied to other states
or conditions of a far more active or intelligent description.

Thus, for illustration, I may say that within my own experience, I
have by this process succeeded since my seventieth year in working
all day far more assiduously, and without any sense of weariness or
distaste for labour, than I ever did at any previous period of my
life. And the reader need only try the extremely easy experiment, as I
have described it, to satisfy himself that he can do the same, that he
can continue it with growing strength _ad infinitum_, and that this
power will unquestionably at some future time be employed with
marvellous results in Education. For, beyond all question--since any
human being can easily prove or disprove it by a few experiments--
there is no method known by which inattention, heedlessness, or
negligence in the young can be so promptly and thoroughly cured as by
this; while on the other hand, Attention and Interest by assiduity,
are even more easily awakened. It has indeed seemed to me, since I
have devoted myself to the study of Education from this point of view,
as if it had been like the Iron Castle in the Slavonian legend, unto
which men had for centuries wended their way by a long and wearisome
road of many miles, while there was all the time, unseen and unknown,
a very short and easy subterranean passage, by means of which the
dwellers in the Schloss might have found their way to the town below,
and to the world, in a few minutes.

To this I have added a succinct account of what is, I believe, the
easiest and most comprehensive Art of Memory ever conceived. There
are on this subject more than five hundred works, all based, without
exception, on the _Associative_ system, which may be described as a
stream which runs with great rapidity for a very short time but is
soon choked up. This, I believe, as a means applied to learning, was
first published in my work, entitled _Practical Education_. In it the
pupil is taught the _direct method_; that is, instead of remembering
one thing by means of another, to impress _the image itself_ on the
memory, and frequently revive it. This proc