MEMORY IN EDUCATION. 127

"The memory stands for a man's grip upon himself ; its loss
is characteristic of a disintegration of personality.

I pass then to the kindred subject of concentration.
Psychology is for India, the synthesis of all the sciences.
As by clay everything made of clay is known, so all know-
ledge is founded on a Ipiowledge of the self. How is this
rself to be controlled and focussed ? Only by the power of
•concentration, the capacity for fixing the attention of the
whole mind for more than a brief,, moment upon a single
-aim or thought. Try to do this, try for example to think
•of a triangle, to see it in your mind's eye, and nothing else
but it for, say, two minutes ; unless you have practised
•concentration of thought before, you will not be able to do
it, other thoughts will slip into your consciousness before
you know it, and you will find that your mind has wandered
from its object. But in any case you will realise what it
means to be able thus to concentrate the thoughts at will, to
rule and not be ruled by them. Thoughts are not guests
to come and go of themselves ; they must be chosen and
invited, or turned away at will.

I will give an instance or two of the way in which
"this concentration enters into the ideal of Hindu culture,
.-and of the ways in which it is learnt. A typical story in,
the Makabharata describes the shooting lesson of the
.young princes. A clay bird is the target. Each prince in
turn is asked what he sees. One says " A bird" ; another,
*'" A branch with a bird upon it," and so on. At last
Arjunna, the youngest, answers ; " A bird's head, and in
•that head only the eye." " The moment," says a writer on
Hindu life, " of the telling of this story to an Indian child
is tense with feeling. For it embodies the culminating ideal
of the nation, inasmuch as concentratiba of mmd staads
=a,mong Hindus for the supreme -exp?msiQja of tha& greatness