admit you are too old. Mental age is a matter of training.
5.Don’t expect to become mentally efficient by means of one lesson. There are 12 lessons and some work ahead of you.
6.Don’t skip. Master every sentence. We teach the science and art of mental efficiency in the least possible number of printed pages.
EXERCISES
Exercise I.
It will be remembered that on a previous page (see p. 19) we dealt with the need of vivid impressions as a source of sound knowledge and reliable memory. It follows from this that the first scientific step in mental training is to educate the powers through which most of our information comes, namely, sight and hearing. Take a sheet of paper and write down a list of the names of six of your friends—both sexes. Opposite each name write the (a) colour of the eyes, (b) the shape of the nose, (c) the manner of wearing the hair, and, in the case of men, the absence or presence of beard and moustache. (d) Add also a note as to any particular article of clothing worn on the last occasion you saw the person concerned.
Some people find an exercise of this kind very easy; they are naturally acute observers; other people find it rather difficult; their powers need training.
Exercise II.
Take a set of dominoes, shuffle them face down, and then pick up one of them. Turn it up and remember the total number of pips on it. Suppose this is the 5—4, equalling 9. Turn it face down and pick up another with it. Turn both face up, and see how quickly you can name the total of the two dominoes without actually counting them. Do not try this experiment more than once or twice the first day or two, but after a week’s practice with two, you may add a third and then a fourth, naming the total number of pips instantly, without counting them at all.
For variety, deal out four cards, face downwards, side by side. Turn up the first and note what it is, replacing it face downwards. Repeat the process with the other three cards, then after a few moments, try to recall the four in order. When you can do this correctly, experiment with five cards, gradually increasing the number. One student was able to remember the whole pack.
After a few weeks of this sight training you can amuse yourself and your friends by asking them to place about a dozen articles upon a table; matchboxes, spoons, paper-weights, penknives, eye-glasses, anything; each object being slightly separated from the others. Let them be covered with a hat or with a small tray while you are out of the room. No matter how quickly they lift the cover and replace it again, you will be able to name a majority out of a dozen or more articles.
Work one or two of these simple exercises occasionally, until you feel you are acquiring greater speed and accuracy.
Exercise III.
It is interesting and useful to know at what distance removed from you the ticking of a watch can be heard. Deafness is a matter of degree, and sometimes minor defects in hearing, quite remediable in their early stages, are allowed to develop unnoticed. Acuteness of hearing, indeed, can be cultivated; and it is worth the trouble to increase by inches the distance between you and the watch, so as to determine the ratio of improvement. Thus, if on a first attempt you can hear a watch ticking on a table five yards off, stand a foot farther away, then another foot, and so on until you fail to hear the sound.
Exercise IV.
Whenever there is a connection between two ideas, or between the words representing two ideas, the connection is based on one of four laws, the first of which is the law of inherent connection; the second is the law of opposition, the third is the law of external connection; and the fourth is the law of similarity of sound. A special lesson on these laws will be given later on in the Course, and the mastery of it will enable you to write down 1,000 or more words, and on reading them over once to repeat the whole list from beginning to end and from the end to the beginning.
At present, we shall do no more than illustrate the fact that such a connection does exist. Here, for instance, is a list of eight words. By way of exercise read them through once noting the connections, then repeat them, or as many of them as you can.
1.White
2.Black
3.Nigger
4.Lynching
5.America
6.Canada
7.Reciprocity
8.Defeat
Here is a second list, this time eighteen words. Endeavour to remember them so as to repeat them after a single reading.
Observe the associated connections between the words.
1.Rose
2.Flower
3.Show
4.Prizes
5.Money
6.Miserly
7.Scrooge
8.Dickens
9.Bleak House
10.Broadstairs
11.Kent
12.Hops
13.Sleep
14.Insomnia
15.Medicine
16.Bottle
17.Neck
18.Gallows
SPECIAL EXERCISES FOR MIND TRAINING AND HEALTH
By EUSTACE MILES, M.A.
With this revised edition of the Pelman Course the Directors present a complete system of physical exercises, specially compiled by the eminent authority on all matters pertaining to bodily health, Mr. Eustace Miles, M.A.
Of Mr. Miles’ work in the science of health research, physical training, diet, etc. it is almost unnecessary to speak; his name is a household word in this and most other countries.
Mr. Miles, himself an authority on Mental Training, has on many occasions expressed the highest possible opinion of the Pelman Course, and in securing his collaboration for the Physical Training side of the Institute’s Work, the Directors are confident in the belief that they are offering students the best possible combination of exercises for mental and bodily fitness that can be presented.
The exercises prepared by Mr. Miles will suit the requirements of the majority of students,
