THE E.M. HEALTH EXERCISES
THE PELMAN SYSTEM OF MIND AND MEMORY TRAINING.
LESSON I.
Introductory.
I. WHAT THE COURSE COVERS.
1. The Pelman System of Mind and Memory Training is a full course of instruction in mental efficiency, designed to meet every requirement of thought and life, the whole being balanced and arranged in a uniform manner by the Pelman psychologists who have had thirty years’ experience in dealing with the intellectual needs of every class of society. The Course is comprised in a series of twelve lessons, which are based, not on book knowledge, but on a practical acquaintance with the requirements of the age. The real value and application of every statement made in the Course has been tested again and again with unvarying success. No essential requirement has been omitted and nothing unnecessary has been included. Within the compass of the twelve lessons you will be shewn
How to develop energy, enterprise, and self-confidence;
How to think in a productive manner and according to the laws of Logic;
How to observe;
How to train the senses, such as sight and hearing;
How to understand and utilise the principles of association;
How to practise analysis and synthesis, the reduction of a statement or problem to its simplest possible form and the combination of old ideas into new ones;
How to concentrate the attention and to strengthen the will;
How to use the forces of suggestion and self-suggestion;
How to frame for any subject a scheme of study suited to your own conditions;
How to keep the mind and brain in good health;
And throughout the whole Course you will have brought before you the fact that every activity of thought and work depends upon Memory, and you will be shewn how to develop a reliable Memory. Incidentally many other matters of interest and of vital importance will be placed before you. In order that the Course may be understood without difficulty by students of every class the use of technical and scientific terms has been rigidly excluded except where a simple explanation of them has been added; but students who are acquainted with the science of psychology will readily be able to supply for themselves the technical expressions which have been purposely omitted.
II. CAUSES OF MENTAL INEFFICIENCY.
2. It is only natural that men and women who are not “well-born” in the sense of being the offspring of healthy parents, should suffer certain mental disadvantages. Physical weaknesses nearly always affect adversely the qualities of the mind; and, so far as bodily idiosyncrasies act and react on mental conditions, it is probable that the good and bad qualities of every parentage are transmitted to its progeny.
The Pelman Institute has found that many people trace their mind-wandering habits to inheritance from one or both parents; and although a few may be mistaken in this diagnosis, there can be no doubt that maternal and paternal qualities are in some instances, faithfully reproduced in the children. The subject is one around which many controversies have raged, and we have no desire to re-open an acrid discussion. It is sufficient to point out that a natural or developed inefficiency of brain development, such as a lack of concentration, is hardly likely to appear in the next generation as a superb power of focusing attention. The probability, if not the actuality, is all the other way.
Defective School Methods.
3. But a greater agency for developing mental inefficiencies is the School. Wrong methods of teaching, wrong ideals of education, haste to attain results, bad policy as seen in crowding the young mind with useless knowledge—these have a direct effect in the atrophy of the reasoning powers, especially the relation between cause and effect. In other words what is popularly known as the sense of the “why and wherefore” has no chance of development in the rush for acquiring information and the effort to remember it for examination purposes. Mental powers of every kind frequently suffer injury on account of faulty school curricula. We make this statement not only on the grounds just stated, but because a large number of pupils attribute their mind wandering, and defective memories, to the bad mental habits fostered by modern school methods.
Of course the effect is not the same in every case. Scores of scholars suffer no conscious drawbacks from the crowded syllabus of the present day school; they prosper intellectually in spite of everything. But a certain percentage inevitably sustain loss, all the more pronounced when there is added the natural carelessness and indifference of youth to serious tasks.
14 to 25: Critical Years.
4. Again, lack of discipline between the years of 14 and 25 often gives rise to mental inefficiency. Whatever advantage school routine has offered in the way of attention to prescribed lessons at certain hours is frequently lost; there is no master to supervise effort outside the round of daily duties; reading is an indulgence of curiosity rather than a fixed plan for the training of intelligence. Thus at 25, or later, men and women find themselves unable to concentrate because they have not continued the mental discipline which the school may in their cases have begun. They have developed certain bad habits, intellectually; and they need in consequence a course of training by way of corrective.
Illness, particularly of a nervous kind, is another source of mental inefficiency—concentration and memory being the functions that suffer most. In such cases physical and mental remedies should be used together cautiously, slowly, and hopefully. Any kind of negative suggestion, such as “I don’t think my memory will ever recover,” is very prejudicial to success, and any kind of physical neglect will exert a mischievous influence on the powers of the mind. There should be, first, a strong determination to become physically fit; next, a re-training of the defective functions on scientific lines, taking care not to press the exercises too keenly, as any over-exertion would defeat the end in view.
There are other reasons, both physical and mental, why inefficient conditions are brought about, but those indicated are the chief. Accidents, insomnia, residence in tropical climates, over-indulgence in alcohol or tobacco, are more or less potent factors in depleting intellectual powers—especially memory.
III. AGE, IN RELATION TO MENTAL EFFICIENCY.
5. Am I too old? This is a serious question which the after - forty reader addresses to himself and to us: occasionally we receive the question from a man of 35.
The answer a man generally gives to himself is “Yes, I am too old.” The answer we give is neither “Yes” nor “No.”
First, the age limit for mental efficiency depends on the individual. If a man has allowed his mind to run to seed up to the age of 50, there is little chance of his doing anything to improve himself in a manner that is unmistakeable. He may stop the mental dry rot that has set in—and this is in itself worth doing; but he could not expect to increase his mental acumen, although he could improve his memory to some extent. On the other hand, the man of 50 who has, by reading, by business, or in other ways, kept his intelligence active, has every reason to believe that he can increase his mental powers all round: indeed, the results or inquiry into this matter shew that many of the world’s great men have done their best work after the age of 50.
6. Before proceeding further, it may be interesting to inquire why men of 45-50 are almost invariably pessimistic about the development of their mental powers. It is partly because the physical powers have begun to decline, although it may be in minute degree, and