Dr. Carpenter tells of a member of Parliament who could repeat long
legal documents and acts of Parliament after one reading. When he was
congratulated on his remarkable gift, he replied that, instead of being
an advantage to him, it was often a source of great inconvenience,
because when he wished to recollect anything in a document he had read,
he could do it only by repeating the whole from the beginning up to the
point which he wished to recall. Maudsley says that the kind of memory
which enables a person 'to read a photographic copy of former
impressions with his mind"s eye is not, indeed, commonly associated with
high intellectual power,' and gives as a reason that such a mind is
hindered by the very wealth of material furnished by the memory from
discerning the relations between separate facts upon which judgment and
reasoning depend. It is likewise a common source of surprise among
teachers that many of the pupils who could outstrip their classmates in
learning and memory do not turn out to be able men. But this, says
Whately, 'is as reasonable as to wonder that a cistern if filled should
not be a perpetual fountain.' It is possible for one to be so lost in a
tangle of trees that he cannot see the woods.
title=customers