unbiased discussion of the related biblical history (especially the writings of Isaiah and Hosea) and the Egyptian data. But even in the period of disintegration the minor princes of the Delta were no doubt associated with their eastern neighbours, and although the Assyrian Muṣri stands in the same relation to the people of Philistia as do the Edomites and allied tribes of the Old Testament, Philistia itself was always intimately associated with Egypt. (See Philistines.)
The problem is complicated by the obscurity which overhangs the history of south Palestine and the Delta (see Edom; Midian). The political importance of Egypt was not constant, and the known fluctuations of geographical terms combine with the doubtful accuracy of early writers to increase the difficulties. The Assyrian evidence alone points very strongly to a Muṣri in north-west Arabia; the biblical evidence alone suggests an extra-Egyptian Miṣrayim. On the whole the result of discussion has been to admit the probability that Miṣrayim could refer to a district outside the limits of Egypt proper. But it has not justified the application of this conclusion to all the instances in which some critics have relied upon it, or the sweeping inferences and reconstructions which have sometimes been based upon it. Each case must be taken on its merits.
See further, H. Winckler, Altorient. Forschungen, i. 24 seq.; Mitteil. d. vorderasiat. Gesell. (1898), pp. 1 sqq., 169 sqq.; Hibbert Journal (April 1904); Keilinschr. u. das alte Test., 3rd ed., 136 sqq.; and Im Kampfe um den alten Orient, ii. (1907); T. K. Cheyne, especially Kingdom of Judah (1908), pp. xiv. sqq.; F. Hommel, Vier neue arab. Landschaftsnamen in A.T. For criticisms (many of them somewhat captious) see König's reply to Hommel (Berlin, 1902), A. Noordtzij, Theolog. Tijdsch. (1906, July, September), and E. Meyer, Israeliten u. ihre Nachbarstämme, pp. 455 sqq. A valuable survey of the geographical and other conditions is given by N. Schmidt, Hibbert Journal (January 1908). (S. A. C.)
MNEMONICS (from Gr. μνᾶσθαι, remember; whence μνήμων,
mindful; τὸ μνημονικόν, sc. τέχνημα, that which mechanically
aids the memory), the general name applied to devices for aiding
the memory. Such devices are also described as memoria
technica. The principle is to enable the mind to reproduce a
relatively unfamiliar idea, and specially a series of dissociated
ideas, by connecting it, or them, in some artificial whole, the
parts of which are mutually suggestive. A pupil is far more
likely to remember the cities which claimed to be the birthplace
of Homer when he remembers that their names can be made to
form the hexameter line, “Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Salamis,
Rhodos, Argos, Athenae.” Among the most famous examples
of metrical mnemonics are the “gender rhymes” of the Latin
grammars, the hexameter lines (especially that beginning
“Barbara Celarent”) invented by logicians (for a list see
Baldwin’s Dict. of Philos., vol. ii., s.v, “Mnemonic Verses”), the
verse for remembering the number of days in the months
(“Thirty days hath September, April, June and November”).
Other devices are numerous. Thus the name and lights of the
sides of a ship may be remembered because the three shorter
words “port,” “left,” “red,” go together, as compared with
the longer, “starboard,” “right,” “green.”
Memory is commonly classified by psychologists according as it is exercised (a) mechanically, by attention and repetition; (b) judiciously, by careful selection and co-ordination; and (c) ingeniously, by means of artifices, i.e. mnemotechny, mnemonics. It must, however, be observed that no mnemonic is of any value which does not possess the qualities of (a) and (b). A mnemonic is essentially a device which uses attention and repetition, and careful selection is equally necessary. A more accurate description of mnemonics is “mediate” or “indirect” memory. In the technical sense the word “mnemonic” is confined to the systems of general application which have been elaborated by various writers.
Systems.—Mnemonic devices were much cultivated by Greek sophists and philosophers, and are repeatedly referred to by Plato and Aristotle. In later times the invention was ascribed to the poet Simonides,[1] perhaps for no other reason than that the strength of his memory was famous. Cicero, who attaches considerable importance to the art, but more to the principle of order as the best help to memory, speaks of Carneades (or perhaps Charmades) of Athens and Metrodorus of Scepsis as distinguished examples of the use of well-ordered images to aid the memory. The latter is said by Pliny to have carried the art so far “ut nihil non iisdem verbis redderet auditum.” The Romans valued such helps as giving facility in public speaking. The method used is described by the author of Rhet. ad Heren., iii. 16-24; see also Quintilian (Inst. Or. xi. 2), whose account is, however, somewhat incomplete and obscure. In his time the art had almost ceased to be practised. The Greek and Roman system of mnemonics was founded on the use of mental places and signs or pictures, known as “topical” mnemonics. The most usual method was to choose a large house, of which the apartments, walls, windows, statues, furniture, &c., were severally associated with certain names, phrases, events or ideas, by means of symbolic pictures; and to recall these it was only necessary to search over the apartments of the house till the particular place was discovered where they had been deposited by the imagination. In accordance with this system, if it were desired to fix an historic date in the memory, it was localized in an imaginary town divided into a certain number of districts, each with ten houses, each house with ten rooms, and each room with a hundred quadrates or memory-places, partly on the floor, partly on the four walls, partly on the roof. Thus, if it were desired to fix in the memory the date of the invention of printing (1436), an imaginary book, or some other symbol of printing, would be placed in the thirty-sixth quadrate or memory-place of the fourth room of the first house of the historic district of the town. Except that the rules of mnemonics are referred to by Martianus Capella, nothing further is known regarding the practice of the art until the 13th century. Among the voluminous writings of Roger Bacon is a tractate De arte memorativa. Raimon Lull devoted special attention to mnemonics in connexion with his ars generalis. The first important modification of the method of the Romans was that invented by the German poet Konrad Celtes, who, in his Epitoma in utramque Ciceronis rhetoricam cum arte memorativa nova (1492), instead of places made use of the letters of the alphabet. About the end of the 15th century Petrus de Ravenna (b. 1448) awakened such astonishment in Italy by his mnemonic feats that he was believed by many to be a necromancer. His Phoenix artis memoriae (Venice, 1491, 4 vols.) went through as many as nine editions, the seventh appearing at Cologne in 1608. An impression equally great was produced about the end of the 16th century by Lambert Schenkel (Gazophylacium, 1610), who taught mnemonics in France, Italy, and Germany, and, although he was denounced as a sorcerer by the university of Louvain, published in 1593 his tractate De memoria at Douai with the sanction of that celebrated theological faculty. The most complete account of his system is given in two works by his pupil Martin Sommer, published at Venice in 1619. In 1618 John Willis (d. 1628?) published Mnemonica; sive ars reminiscendi (Eng. version by Leonard Sowersby, 1661; extracts in Feinaigle’s New Art of Memory, 3rd ed., 1813), containing a clear statement of the principles of topical or local mnemonics. Giordano Bruno, in connexion with his exposition of the ars generalis of Lull, included a memoria technica in his treatise De umbris idearum. Other writers of this period are the Florentine Publicius (1482); Johann Romberch (1533); Hieronimo Morafiot, Ars memoriae (1602); B. Porta, Ars reminiscendi (1602).
In 1648 Stanislaus Mink von Wenussheim or Winckelmann made known what he called the “most fertile secret” in mnemonics—namely, the use of consonants for figures, so as to express numbers by words (vowels being added as required); and the philosopher Leibnitz adopted an alphabet very similar to that of Winckelmann in connexion with his scheme for a form of writing common to all languages. Winckelmann’s method, which in fact is adopted with slight changes by the majority of subsequent “original” systems, was modified and supplemented in regard to many details by Richard Grey (1694–1771), who published a Memoria technica in 1730. The
- ↑ Pliny, H.N. vii. 24. Cicero, De or. ii. 86, mentions this belief without committing himself to it.
