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 process soon becomes habitual and very easy. In from one year to eighteen months a pupil can by means of it accurately recall a lecture or sermon. It has the immediate advantage, over all the associate systems, of increasing and enlarging the scope and vigour of the memory, or indeed of the mind, so that it may truly bear as a motto, _Vires acquirit eundo_--"it gains in power as it runs long."