How to Develop a Perfect Memory (25 page)

Much of what we know about Simonides and the classical art of memory

comes from three Roman sources, all written between the first century BC and the first century AD: an anonymous work entitled
Ad Herrenium,
Quintillian's
Institutio Oratorio,
and Cicero's
De Oratore.
(The three are discussed in Dame Frances Yates's absorbing book
The Art of Memory,
republished by Pimlico, 1992.) The Romans documented and expanded the practice pioneered by the

Greeks.

Written by a teacher,
Ad Herrenium
is addressed to students of rhetoric and concerns itself with the basic rules of memory. In it we learn that the Greeks believed in two types of memory: natural and artificial. Those who are born with good natural memories could improve them still further by training the artificial memory. More significantly, training and exercise could dramatically help anyone who is born with a very poor memory. In other words, however bad it was, your memory could be improved if treated like a muscle and exercised constantly.

'In every discipline,' says the author of
Ad Herrenium,
'artistic theory is little avail without unremitting exercise, but especially in mnemonics, theory is almost valueless unless made good by industry, devotion, toil, and care.'

I couldn't have put it better myself!

PLACES

The Greeks discovered that the best way to remember things was to impose order on them. They did this by choosing a series of real places or
loci
which they could visualise in their mind. Images of what they wanted to recall would then be placed on the various
loci.
Writing in
De Oratore,
Cicero says, 'The order of the places will preserve the order of the things to be remembered.'

The Greeks recommended using spacious and architecturally varied buildings. Ouintillian suggests using buildings with numerous rooms, forecourts, balconies, arches and statues. 'It is an assistance to the memory,' he writes, 'if places are stamped on the mind, which anyone can believe from experiment.

For when we return to a place after a considerable absence, we not merely recognize the place itself, but remember things that we did there, and recall the persons whom we met and even the unuttered thoughts that passed through our minds when we were there before.'

A lot of people might have come across this 'Roman room' method, as it is called; I had heard of positioning literal images around rooms, but always thought it sounded too cramped and confusing. Significantly, Quintillian goes on to say that
loci
don't have to be mapped out around the house: 'What I have spoken of as being done in a house can also be done in public buildings,
or on
a long journey
[my italics], or in going through a city.'

This is the only extant text that recommends using journeys. Still, my habit of wandering aimlessly around Guildford, mapping out a mental route, is

clearly not so daft after all! Frances Yates even suggests that it would have been common in Greek and Roman times to see lonely students of rhetoric (or poets) meandering around deserted buildings and streets plotting their
loci.

This discovery has serious implications for me: the end of men-in-white-coat jokes. The next time someone stops me in the street and asks with some

concern what I am doing, I will look them in the eye and tell them!

RULES FOR PLACES

Loci
are compared in
Ad Herrenium
to wax tablets. They can be used again and again, even though the images inscribed on them are regularly wiped off.

As befits someone from the twentieth century, I have always described my journeys as blank video tapes, which can be similarly wiped clean and used again.

The Greeks had a number of interesting rules for loci. The following are taken from
Ad Herrenium:

Loci
should be deserted or solitary places. Crowds of people tend to weaken impressions and distract from the key image. (Guildford is always a ghost town when I use it as a route.)

The students are urged to give each 5th
locus
a distinguishing mark: they should include a gold hand (five fingers) in the scene, for example. On the 10th
locus,
they should imagine a personal acquaintance called Decimus. (I have always made the 6th, or 11th, or half-way stage stand out in my mind.)

Loci
should not be too similar: too many intercolumnar spaces are not recommended, as they might lead to confusion. (I always make sure that my

stages are different from each other.)

The intervals between
loci
should be a particular length: 30 feet.

The
loci
should be not too large, or too small, too brightly lit, or too dark.

Imaginary places can be used as well as real. It is also good to mix both together: give your house an extra floor,
etc.

IMAGES

The Greeks had two types of images; one for memorizing things, arguments or notions; and one for remembering single words. Each image would be placed at a different
locus.
As he was reciting his poetry, Simonides would have moved around his mental journey, recalling each image as he went. Lawyers would remind themselves of the details of a case in this way; orators would know their next subject or topic. (Interestingly, the English word 'topic' comes from the Greek
topoi,
which means place or
locus.)

The second type of imagery, for individual words, seems a little extreme.

Most Latin sources are in agreement that the idea of referring to a new
locus
for each word of a speech was preposterous. The author of
Ad Herrenium
suggests that it was, at best, a good mental exercise.

THE USE OF PEOPLE

According to the author of
Ad Herrenium,
certain images stick in the mind, others don't; adopting the tone of a psychologist, he sets out to find the most memorable image.

'If we see or hear something exceptionally base, dishonourable, unusual, great, unbelievable, or ridiculous, we are likely to remember it for a long time. We ought then to set up images of a kind that can adhere longest in memory.

And we shall do so if we establish similitudes as striking as possible; if we set up images that are not many or vague but
active
[my italics]; if we assign to them exceptional beauty or singular ugliness; if we ornament some of

them, as with crowns or purple cloaks, or if we somehow disfigure them, as by introducing one stained with blood, or soiled with mud, or smeared with red paint, so that its form is more striking, or by assigning certain comic effects to our images, for that too will ensure our remembering them more readily.'

FURTHER EVIDENCE

I find this passage from
Ad Herrenium
particularly uncanny. As you know, people play an essential part in my approach to memory. I have even assigned characters to every number from 00 to 99.
Ad Herrenium
is the only one of the three surviving Latin sources which states that people make the best images.

Quintillian advocates the use of objects such as anchors (to remind him of the naval content of a speech) and weapons (to remind him of the military content), and Cicero talks ambiguously about using masks (persona) as images.

It won't surprise you to learn that I think
Ad Herrenium
is the most accurate account of the Greek's use of imagery. The famous anecdote about Simonides and the banquet suggests that he was equally adept at memorizing people as he was places, or
loci.
There is also an extant fragment of Greek text (Dialexis, 400 BC) which implies that the Greeks thought of the gods Mars or Achilles to remember courage, and Vulcan to remember metal working.

Thomas Aquinas's chief contribution to the art of memory was to establish it in a religious context. In the hands of the thirteenth century Scholastics, memory shifted from rhetoric to ethics, even becoming a part of the cardinal virtue of Prudence. Put simply, memory was a way of getting to heaven and avoiding hell. Virtues and vices were quickly personified; once they were seen as people, we all stood a better chance of remembering what was right and wrong in this world.

THE IMPORTANCE OF ACTIONS

The passage from
Ad Herrenium
illustrates another similarity between our two systems. The emphasis on active images
(imagines agentes)
is identical; I have always stressed that each person must have a unique and distinguishing action, and here Simonides is saying that the image must be doing something.

There are only three examples of human images in
Ad Herrenium.
This is a pity, although I applaud the reason why the author didn't leave us with more.

As I have stressed all along in this book, the best images are the ones that you make up for yourself. The author of
Ad Herrenium
took a similar line, stating his task as tutor is not to list a thousand examples, but to teach the method, give a couple of illustrations, and let the student do the rest.

Those images that we do have are, nevertheless, fine examples. In the same way that I asked you, when remembering a long number, to combine a person with the action to create a complex image, so the author of
Ad Herrenium
urges the student to throw together a number of different images.

In the following example, he chooses an image that a lawyer might use

when remembering details about a case: the defendant has poisoned a man, the motive was to gain an inheritance, and there were numerous witnesses.

'We shall imagine the man in question as lying ill in bed, if we know him personally. If we do not know him, we shall take someone to be our invalid, so that he may come to mind at once. And we shall place the defendant at the bedside, holding in his right hand a cup, in his left, tablets, and on the fourth finger, a ram's testicles. In this way we can have in memory the man who was poisoned, the witnesses, and the inheritance.'

This complex image would be placed on the first
locus.
The cup would remind the lawyer of the poison; and the tablets, the inheritance. The lawyer could, in this way, remember the pertinent details of the case. Further, related

information would be stored in similar form at the second
locus,
and so on. In effect, the lawyer is using his
loci
as a mental filing cabinet.

It is also worth noting here, although it is not as clear as it could be in this passage, that the author of
Ad Herrenium
is suggesting that we use people we know personally.

SOUNDS SIMILAR

The ram's testicles are a more unusual aspect of the image. Frances Yates, in her discussion on the subject, suggests that the Latin word for testicle
(testicu
-

lus)
would have reminded the lawyer of the word for witnesses
(testes).
In another part of
Ad Herrenium,
she points out, the author gives an example of an image ('Domitius raising his hands to heaven while he is lashed by the Marcii Reges') that is designed to remind the student of rhetoric of a particular sentence
('domum itionem reges').
The only obvious connection is in the sound of the words. I subscribe to this interpretation. When I am memorizing

someone's name, for example, I often use images that include something that sounds similar to the person's name.

The reason why the testicles must belong to a ram is less clear; Yates suggests that it has something to do with Aries and the signs of the Zodiac, the order of which was known to have been used as a mnemonic.

IMAGINATION

Practitioners of the classical art of memory must have had an extraordinarily vivid inner vision. Anyone who comments on the lighting of a particular
locus
along an imaginary route is assuming tremendous powers of imagery.

Simonides himself was universally praised for his use of evocative imagery in his poetry, and he frequently compared his poems to paintings.

Aristotle (fourth century BC), writing in
De Anima,
believed that the human soul never thought without first creating a mental picture. All knowledge and information entered the soul via the five senses; the imagination would act upon it first, turning the information into images; only then could the intellect get to work.

Aristotle's theory of knowledge has an important bearing on memory,

although he himself was never a great believer in the mnemonics practised by Simonides. In Chapter 2, I said that the key to a good memory was your

imagination. Even though he might have disapproved of much of this book, Aristotle would not have found fault there.

Memory, he argued, belonged to the same part of the soul as the imagination. Both faculties were concerned with the forming of images, there was simply a small time difference: memory dealt with things past, rather than with things present.

Our understanding of the imagination is slightly different today, but its similarities with memory are still there for all to see. They are two sides of the same coin, both requiring inner vision.

LAWS OF ASSOCIATION

Aristotle is often attributed with forming the laws of association. We remember something by recalling something else that is similar, closely related, or opposite to that which we want to remember. Clearly, this is the basis of every memory system ever invented, not just mine. If we can't remember the actual name, object, number, or topic, we recall something else (a place or image), which then triggers off our memory.

Aristotle makes this point when he is discriminating between reminiscence and memory in
De Anima.
He goes on to say that those things that are the easiest to remember have an order, a theory we have already discussed.

Loci,
images, actions, persons, imagination, association, order — it's no wonder the Greeks had such good memories.

27

FAMOUS MEMORY

MEN

There have been a number of famous memory men throughout the ages,