perceptions may resemble in
some way the perception which lies at the basis of the conception, and
be thus more or less symbolical; or they may be merely arbitrary
creations of the creative imagination, and are in this case pure signs.
In common speech and writing, we call the free retaining of these
perceptions created by imagination, and the recalling of the conceptions
denoted by them, _Memory_. It is by no means a particular faculty of the
mind, which is again subdivided into memory of persons, names, numbers,
&c. As to its form, memory is the stage of the dissolution of
conception; but as to its content, it arises from the interest which we
take in a subject-matter. From this interest results, moreover, careful
attention, and from this latter, facility in the reproductive
imagination. If these acts have preceded, the fixing of a name, or of a
number, in which the content interesting us is as it were summed up, is
not difficult. When interest and attention animate us, it seems as if we
did not need to be at all troubled about remembering anything. All the
so-called mnemonic helps only serve to make more difficult the act of
memory. This act is in itself a double function, consisting of, first,
the fixing of the sign, and second, the fixing of the conception
subsumed under it. Since the mnemonic technique adds to these one more
conception, through whose means the things with which we have to deal
are to be fixed in order to be able freely to express them in us, it
trebles the functions of remembering, and forgets that the mediation of
these and their relation--wholly arbitrary and highly artificial--must
also be remembered. The true help of memory consists in not helping it
at all, but in simply taking up the object into the ideal regions of the
mind by the force of the infinite self-determination which mind
possesses.

--Lists of names, as e.g. of the Roman emperors, of the popes, of the
caliphs, of rivers, mountains, authors, cities, &c.; also numbers, as
e.g. the multiplication table, the melting points of minerals, the dates
of battles, of births and deaths, &c., must be learned without aid. All
indirect means only serve to do harm here, and are required as
self-discovered mediation only in case that interest or attention has
become weakened.--

Sec. 99. The means to be used, which result from the nature of memory
itself, are on the one hand the pronouncing and writing of the names and
numbers, and on the othe