Man cannot hope fully to duplicate this mental process artificially, but he certainly ought to be able to learn from it. In minor ways he may even improve, for his records have relative permanency. The first idea, however, to be drawn from the analogy concerns selection. Selection by association, rather than indexing, may yet be mechanized. One cannot hope thus to equal the speed and flexibility with which the mind follows an associative trail, but it should be possible to beat the mind decisively in regard to the permanence and clarity of the items resurrected from storage.

I really didn't understand the train of thought on this bit. There is absolutely no rule of nature that says "one cannot create or optimize consciousness". Looking up the author, it seems that he only lived until 1944, when artificial intelligence research hadn't yet reached the stone ages. Perhaps makes some of his other predictions a bit more significant!