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Editor's Preface THERE is no topic in educational psychology more important than that of memory and its cultivation. Memory is indispensable in all intellectual processes, and therefore must be trained and developed. But it is liable to prove destructive to the other faculties (so called) and supplant them; hence it must be restrained within its proper limits, made auxiliary to the other faculties, and not allowed to assume the chief role. It is a matter of every-day comment that much memorizing deadens the power of thought verbal or statistical memory being "mechanical." But it is also equally true that memory may paralyze the powers of sense perception, imagination, and will. With an overactive memory we suppose ourselves to see in an object what we remember to have seen in it before, and any new features escape our superficial perception. This is true, too, in the case of imagination, the power which ought to be productive as well as reproductive, and by which we ought to envisage not only real objects but possible ones, and thereby sharpen our powers of invention and discovery. Even the imagination may be dulled by a too active memory, and degenerate into a mirror of the past. The productive imagination should belong not only to poets and artists, but to all men, as a faculty of discovering ideals and emancipating us from the imperfect reality. It should give us a tendency to invention and to aspiration. But, under the weight of prescribed forms and the sway of memory, a civilization crushes out self-activity on the part of individuals and imposes the role of external authority upon all. Thus the will of the individual loses freedom, and settles down into passive obedience to custom and prescription. The important question to determine is the proper amount of memory-cultivation. The Chinese education fills the memory with maxims of Confucius and Mencius, and the individual follows these because there is little else in his mind: their lines are graven so deep that nothing else seems important. The antidote for this baneful effect of memory is to be sought in a method of training that associates effects with causes, and individuals with species ; that associates one idea with another through its essential relations, and not by its accidental properties. One must put thought into the act of memory. Memory is not one faculty, so to speak, but a condition of activity of all faculties. There is one memory of places, another memory of the names of places; one memory of persons, and another memory of names of persons; still another memory of dates; another of principles and causes; and so on. The cultivation of one species of memory may assist or it may hinder another kind of memory, according as the mental activity by which the attention is fixed on one subject aids or hinders the mental activity of the other kind of memory. "Hence," says Mr. Kay (page 13), "we may cultivate the memory for persons without at all improving that for places, and a good memory for colors may afford little help toward the remembrance of forms." On the other hand, the memory of names assists the memory of persons, and that of places assists that of forms. The cases are rare in which a person has a weak memory in all directions. In considering the question of improving the memory, therefore, the individual must ask in what respect he is defective; is it dates, or names, or something else that he fails to remember ? Moreover, it is necessary to ask whether it is important to remember those items that he forgets so easily whether, in short, it is worth while to acquire a habit of remembering them. For instance, as children we remembered village gossip, personal remarks, actions, or things and events, that are so trivial that we do not permit ourselves now to interest ourselves in them or recall them. Do we not find, in fact, our memories of those insipid things and events of childhood still too vivid? We are apt to speak of children, for this very reason, as having strong memories. But would we willingly have again our childish memories? Would it content us to notice trivial circumstances and overlook essential matters? If so, it is easy to gratify our desire by cultivating the childish form of memory. We may give our attention to the accidental features of an event, to the details of trivial gossip, and neglect the main issues and the causal processes. It will naturally result, then, that we shall remember as children remember, with the difference that we shall find ourselves able to do a far greater amount of superficial observation and recollection than children can do. Attention is regarded as the condition of memory (see Chapter VII). Attention implies a selection of a small province of the field before us, and a neglect of the rest. Hence the training of attention implies also a cultivation of neglect, j As we grow mature in our intellectual power we increase in our ability to seize the objects of our choice and to pass over without notice all others. The person without a well-developed power of attention is in a state of passivity toward invading external influences. He is a prey to impressions that come from his environment. Most of these "early impressions," of which we hear so much, were received at a time when trivial things could seize upon us and absorb our powers of observation to the neglect of more essential things. Such passive impressibility, the condition of the childish memory, it is the object of education to eradicate. The pupil must learn to exclude and ignore the many things before him, and to concentrate all his powers of mind on the one chosen subject. Mr. Kay truly remarks (page 259), "It is as one is able to shut out every other object, every other idea, even self, from the mind that he attains the highest degree of mental power." It follows that the discipline of attention makes the memory uneven or unequal. The study of relations weakens our memory of mere isolated data. The study of general ideas causes us to be careless in regard to specific details that naturally follow as effects. Our insight into laws weakens our hold of special instances. Knowing the law of eclipses, we can calculate all past and all future instances, and we do not care to burden our memory with the historical record of eclipses. Our attention to the meaning of a word weakens our memory of its sound; attention to a person's character makes us less careful to remember his costume. While, therefore, it is a correct educational maxim that the memory must be trained on essential relations and causal processes so as to strengthen the power of thought at the same time, yet there may be excess even in this direction. We find, accordingly, people whose memory of dates is so defective as to cause much waste of power; other persons are so forgetful of names as to be under constant embarrassment in conversation or in writing. It is a reasonable thing to correct special defects in the lower orders of memory when they become matters of serious embarrassment. Those special powers of memory should in that case be strengthened. It is a perception of this necessity that has led to systems of mnemonics. The common device of such systems has been association of the items of one province of memory with those of another. The items easily forgotten are fastened, so to speak, to items easily remembered names or dates, for example, to places or events. As it often happens that the items of one order are not related to the other order by the principle of causality or genetic development, it happens that the mnemonic association by which memory of a particular kind is to be strengthened, is merely an accidental relation of the items associated. Contiguity of space or accidental resemblance in sound is to assist us to remember. By mnemonics we cultivate a habit of consciously seeking such accidental relations, and we accordingly injure our power of logical thought by neglecting essential for unessential relations. Our author (page 281) condemns such mnemonic devices severely "The wrong association of ideas in the mind is a source of endless mischief," and quotes Locke as saying: "The connection in our minds of ideas, in themselves loose and independent of one another, has such an influence and is of so great force to set us wrong in our actions, as well moral and natural, passions, reasonings, and notions themselves, that perhaps there is not any one thing that deserves more to be looked after." An example of this wrong method : Gregor von Feinaigle's "New Art of Memory" (London, 1812) says that "the recollection of ideas is assisted by associating some idea of relation between them ; and as we find by experience that whatever is ludicrous is calculated to make a strong impression upon the mind, the more ridiculous the association is the better." Think of an effort of the mind to discover absurd and ridiculous relations between ideas with a view to remember them! That were to cultivate memory at the expense of sane, rational thought. The true method of cultivating and strengthening a defective memory is to practice it on the kind of items that it easily forgets. A few such items must be memorized and reviewed daily, adding a small increment to the list as soon as it has become perfectly mastered. A list with fifty items thus memorized will suffice to develop a habit of attention to such items and a power of recalling them, which will grow steadily with such exercise as circumstances bring occasion for. A personal example may be related. The writer, when in his eighteenth year, was embarrassed by the feebleness of his memory for dates. He commenced learning a list of the dates of accession of English kings William the Conqueror in 1066, William Rufus in 1087, etc. three or four dates the first day; two new ones added the second day; one new one added the third day; thereafter less often. Constant review by-and-by made the entire list familiar. It had to be learned anew a year after, and once again after some years of neglect. But the memory for dates grew steadily, and, without conscious effort, dates and numbers soon came to be seized with a firmer grasp than before. This kind of memory still increases with the writer from year to year, and, although it is not by any means a phenomenal memory, it is very serviceable. A similar cultivation of the special memory for proper names (which in the writer's case had become very weak and threatened to go altogether) has proved serviceable. The special kind of memory that is weak should be cultivated by itself and not attached to some other form of memory. The simile of a magnet is to the point here. Load it to-day with iron filings, and to-morrow it will support a few more. The memory, if only strong enough to retain a single item with effort, will grow stronger by the effort, and will soon retain two items, and finally others in vast numbers and without effort. By this method we avoid fantastic associations and correct the weak faculty itself, instead of fastening its work on another faculty. Let the exercise be a list of dates valuable to retain for themselves. Or, if it is names that one wishes to remember, select a list of important persons that furnish centers of historical information; such, for example, as the names of the Roman emperors, the English and the French kings, the heroes of Plutarch's histories; or of typical personalities, such as the characters in Shakespeare's dramas or in Homer's "Iliad" items of world-historical importance. A list of one hundred proper names learned in their order, as kings of France and of England, and the emperors of Rome, will furnish central nuclei to historic material, and the memorizing of such a list, or, indeed, a list half as large, will so discipline the memory for names as to permanently remove all embarrassment from this source. It is not the length of the list, so much as the thoroughness with which it is learned, that develops the memory. It is not well to go on beyond a hundred items, for the reason that such mechanical memory should not be made too strong. Idiots and semi-idiots may show prodigious powers of remembering numbers, and very feeble intellects may be exceptionally apt in remembering names and other words. Therefore, while there should be some special training to strengthen varieties of mechanical memory that have become too weak for the service required of them, they should not be over-cultivated. Repetition and careful attention should be relied upon more than association in the cultivation of the mechanical varieties of memory, for the reason that association, though more showy and brilliant in its effects than repetition and attention, is not so much a correction of the special province of memory defective as a substitution of another province of memory for the defective one. Memory of places, for example, is substituted vicariously for memory of numbers or names. The author of this book, Mr. Kay, devotes the first four chapters to a discussion of the physiological side of memory not, however, with much reference to the recent special researches in physiological psychology. This is just as well, perhaps, for there is nothing strictly physiological thus far discovered that is of much practical value in the educational treatment of memory. Much, it is true, has been located or partially located in the brain and nervous system, and diseases of the memory may with some degree of certainty be connected with accompanying lesions in the brain. But whether these lesions are causes or effects, or both, we are not able to cure an ordinary case of failing memory except by pure psychological means- namely, by attention, mental association, and repetition- doubtless affecting the brain thereby, but through free acts of the will. We can affect the brain through the effort of the will on the memory, but we can not as yet develop the memory through body-culture. Aside from this exception (of the more recent authorities) Mr. Kay has everywhere supported his statements by copious quotations from the literature of the subject. More than one thousand well-chosen citations from nearly two hundred authors are given, and the reader may see the drift of past investigation and theory on the subject. It may be added that Aristotle's profound insight into the nature of the soul and its powers deserves more study. In his "De Anima" that philosopher places memory with the phantasy, the activity of sense-perception, and the discursive intellect, as together constituting the "passive reason". He considers this part of the soul perishable or moribund. This thought of the perishability of such faculties in the onward career of the soul has quite another and deeper meaning than that usually attributed to it. Memory and sense-perception become less and less prominent factors in the human mind, and in some departments they already occupy a very inferior position. In arithmetic and geometry, for example, we deduce the special instance rather than observe it and memorize it. In each of the natural sciences an epoch of observation closes with an exhaustive inventory of its details, and there follows an epoch in which the whole compass of details is organized into a system by means of a discovery of the laws and modes of action of the organic energy that produces the facts. Each fact is then seen in the perspective of its history, or of its genesis, and thus thoroughly explained; but with such explanation the scaffolding of original facts that were inventoried and systematized falls away, and all observation of new facts in the province becomes a mere verification of the known mode of action of the energy. Agassiz, having learned the principles of biological structure, recognizes a new fish from one of its scales, and can tell with confidence its structure and conditions of living. It is not a matter of memory, but of direct insight. So Ouvier can see the whole animal in one of its bones, and Lyell see in each pebble its entire history. Goethe's allegorical "Homunculus" symbolizes this new achievement in the scientific mind. The little living being confined in a bottle figures the final career of induction which has arrived at insight or intuition. Having exhaustively surveyed its limited field, each special science seizes upon the organizing principle and can predict facts or recognize and explain them at sight. When we can see each immediate fact in the perspective of its genesis or history, we have no use for memory which preserves for us facts and events isolated from their producing and deducing causes. Memory is moribund, and in province after province it is losing its importance. A fact-producing principle is seized and the facts are kept no longer in vast storehouses, for they can be deduced when wanted, or, if encountered in our experience, they can be explained and dismissed. We look beyond them to their causes, and let sense-perception and memory of such facts both drop. The relative amount of activity of sense-perception, of memory, and of mere reflection on accidental relations, continually diminishes, and the thinking on principles, causes, and organic processes increases. WILLIAM T. Harris CONCORD, MASS., August, 1888. Author's Preface. MANY years ago the present author contributed an article on "Mnemonics" to the Eighth Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica; and since that time, as indeed before, the subject of memory has had, for him, a special interest. The more, however, he studied Systems of Mnemonics the less satisfactory did he find them to be. They are all based on imperfect or mistaken views of the true nature of memory; and the striking effects sometimes produced by them are mere tricks of mental association, which do nothing towards the improvement of the higher parts of memory, or its development as a whole. A pretty extensive reading of works on Mental Philosophy threw light on many points connected with this faculty; but it was only when he came to view it in connection with the facts of Physiology that he arrived at what he believes to be a right understanding of it. Physiology shows the close and intimate connection that subsists between mind and body. From it we learn that every thought that passes through the mind, every sensation we experience, every act we do, produces some definite change in our bodily structure, so, that there is reason to believe that there is a particular state of the body corresponding to every state or act of the mind. This change is permanent, and constitutes in the author's view the physical basis of memory, the type of which may be seen in the scar of a cut finger which remains long after the wound itself is healed, and never wholly disappears. The change so effected is not confined to the brain, but extends to all the parts of the body in which it originally took place. When one performs a set of movements for the first time, he may find considerable difficulty in doing so, owing to the unadaptedness of the parts concerned. These parts, however, retain certain traces of what has taken place in them, so that when the movements come to be performed a second time, the difficulty attending them is somewhat less; and thus at length, through frequent repetition, what was at first accomplished with difficulty, comes to be performed with the greatest ease. Along with this increased ease, the muscles that have been in action are observed to acquire greater size and firmness, according to some, in consequence of an increase in size of the existing fibres, but according to others, with more probability, through the growth of new fibres. And as with the muscles so with the senses. The trained sense is capable of apprehending what to the untrained sense is imperceptible, owing to the greater aptitude of the sense-organ through training. Nor can it be held to be different with our intellectual faculties. The trained reasoner readily detects fallacies in an argument, in consequence of the part of the brain where the reasoning faculty has its seat having been developed by exercise. Men act as they have been accustomed to act, they observe best what they have frequently observed, not merely on account of changes effected in the brain, but also in the muscles and organs of sense. The will has by no means that power over our actions, or even our thoughts, that is commonly supposed. A man cannot at will change his gait, his handwriting, his voice, nor even his modes of thought, simply because the parts concerned in these have developed in the direction in which they have been exercised, and cannot readily act otherwise. When we recall to mind with any degree of distinctness an act we have previously done, the similarity between this and the original doing of it is so great as to favour the opinion that the same parts are concerned in the one as in the other. When we repeat an act a second time, some traces of the first act remain and render the second more easy; and may we not well suppose that these traces have also something to do in the recollection of it? And as with our actions so with our sensations and thoughts, the changes wrought by them in our bodily structure may well be supposed to be concerned in the recollection of them. It is the author's opinion, then, that whatever parts are concerned in the production of a sensation, or in effecting a movement, the same parts are necessary to a full and complete recollection of it. Thus, the senses are not only necessary for the receiving of impressions, but are also concerned in the recollection of them, and the muscles are not only requisite for the performance of actions, but are necessary also for the remembrance of them. This is particularly the case in the highest form of memory, the "representative" or "imaginative," where the past impression is recalled with almost all the vividness and distinctness of the original. Physiologists, however, almost without exception, assert that the brain alone is the seat of the memory. They are shut up to this view from holding that the nerves are capable of conveying impressions only in one direction, sensory nerves only to the brain, motor nerves only from the brain. Hence, when a sensation passes from an organ of sense to the brain it is there treasured up for the after use of the memory. According to this view there is no way by which the mind can communicate with the organ of sense, or take cognisance of its condition. A man ignorant of Physiology believes that he feels an object at the points of his fingers, but the Physiologist steps in and says that he can feel it only in his brain, because the nerves of sensation carry impressions only to the brain. According to Sir W. Hamilton, however, "we have no more right to deny that the mind feels at the finger points, as consciousness assures us, than to assert that it thinks exclusively in the brain". "The organ of the mind" says Prof. Bain, "is not the brain by itself: it is the brain, nerves, muscles, organs of sense, viscera." It was formerly held that nerves conveyed impressions only in one direction owing to a difference in their nature or structure, but this is now found not to be the case, for each class of nerves is capable of conveying impressions in either direction. If the end of a sensory nerve be united with the end of a motor nerve, the excitation of the sensory may be transmitted to the motor fibres, and the reverse. A careful consideration of the subject has led the author to regard each class of nerves as capable of conveying impressions in either direction, sensory nerves, while primarily afferent, being secondarily efferent, and motor nerves, while primarily efferent, being secondarily afferent. Hence a sensory nerve in sensation is afferent conveying an impression to the brain, whereas in perception and in recollection it is efferent conveying an impulse from the brain to the organ of sense. Speaking of a similar view, Prof. M'Kendrick says that it "is quite consistent with all the facts of nervous physiology, and presents fewer difficulties than the one generally held". (Art. "Physiology," in Encyclopedia Britannica, Ninth Edition, 1885.) As strengthening the view that the mind is in connection with all parts of the nervous system, it is to be borne in mind that there is no essential difference between the nervous matter of the brain and that of the numerous ganglia throughout the body, and recent physiological investigations show that the axis cylinder of the nerve fibres is identical with the protoplasmic substance of the nerve cells the latter being simply "nucleated enlargements of the axial cylinder". The importance of this doctrine to the view here advocated is that it enables us to explain how the mind can communicate with the organs of sense or the muscles in recalling past sensations or movements. Unless the same parts are concerned in the recalled sensation as were active in the original, it is difficult to see how they should so closely resemble each other. It is well known that if we close our eyes and think intently on a particular colour, the retina becomes exhausted for the reception of that colour, exactly as if we had been actually gazing upon it. The artist who can recall to mind a scene he has once looked upon, so vividly that he can paint it from memory, as if it were actually before his eyes, must be supposed to have the power of again projecting on the retina the impression previously made on it. Philosophers recognise an essential difference between sensation and perception. In sensation an impression is conveyed inward from an organ of sense to the brain and awakens consciousness ; in perception the awakened consciousness goes out, as it were, upon the sensation, distinguishes it from other sensations, and localises it. In the former it is known that an impulse passes from an organ of sense to the brain, and in the latter it would seem that an impulse passes from the brain to the organ of sense. Every idea in the mind must have entered it by some sense, and in order to its fall and complete recall, it is believed that it must be again projected or imaged in an organ of sense. Even the most abstract of our. ideas are abstracts of sensations belonging to some sense, which is also concerned in the recollection of them. In order to think on a subject it is necessary to put it out as it were from the mind. "Thought," says Heyse, "is not even present to the thinker till he has set it forth out of himself." By thus putting forth his ideas they become as it were objects of sense, and doubtless the senses are concerned in them. Thus the senses are not only necessary for the recollection of our sensations, but even of our ideas. Holding, then, that the seat of the memory is not the brain alone but also the organs of sense and the muscles, it is evident that in order to improve the memory special attention must be given to the training, of the senses. This is to be done by first training them to observe carefully what is before them, and then making them recall or reproduce what has been presented to them, as accurately as possible. These two are distinct. The one depends on attention, the other on association, and frequently recalling what is in the mind. In attention the great thing is to concentrate the mind upon one thing at a time till it is thoroughly mastered. In association we must seek to bring together and associate those ideas that most nearly resemble each other, and that we wish to recall each other. By frequently recalling our knowledge, we, as it were, strengthen and facilitate the means of communication between the senses and the brain. In order that a movement or change in any part of the body may be taken up and apprehended by the mind, it is necessary that a mental image of it be formed. The mind can take no account of any movements or changes that may be taking place in the body, except in so far as they give rise to mental images, and according to the clearness and accuracy of the image which is formed will be the hold taken of it by the memory. These images, it is believed, have their seat not only in the brain, but, like the memory and the mind itself, embrace also an organ of sense or certain of the muscles. As it is held that every motion, sensation, and thought leaves its permanent traces in our physical structure, it naturally follows that every thought or impression that has once been consciously before the mind never afterwards entirely passes from it. It may never again come up consciously before the mind, but it will remain in the region of unconsciousness, giving a colour or bias, it may be, to all our after-thoughts and feelings. Hence the most sanguine hopes may be entertained with regard to the possibilities for improving the memory. What an unspeakable advantage it would be to a man if everything that he had ever read, or heard, or seen, or thought, or done, could be so laid up in his mind that he should be able to recall it at any time he might wish to do so; and who shall say that this is impossible? At least there are cases recorded of men having had such memories. The author has little faith in Arts for improving the memory in two or three lessons, but he has unbounded faith in systems of education, properly conducted, to effect incredible improvements in this direction. Children in their earliest years manifest great power of memory, and they learn to speak and understand their mother-tongue in a very short space of time. This power is said to be speedily lost, but it may well be questioned whether it is not destroyed by wrong methods of teaching. Whatever the child sees it looks at with its whole mind, whatever it hears its whole mind is bent upon it, but as soon as its education begins all this is changed. It is set to learn the alphabet, and here it has three tasks put before it at once. A letter is presented to its eye which perhaps it has never seen before, and it is expected to form a visual image of it; a sound is addressed to its ear, and an auditory image has to be formed of it, and it is expected to pronounce it all at the same time. Now, if there is any truth in the principles here laid down, they clearly show that a child cannot learn two things at the same time without great loss of power and injury to the parts concerned. If we would observe and follow nature, then, the ear should be first of all accustomed to the sounds of the different letters before seeing them, or even being required to pronounce them. Then, when it is familiar with the sounds of the different letters, let it be taught to pronounce them, and only when it can do this accurately should it be made acquainted with the forms. In like manner, in learning a foreign language, the different sounds should first be mastered by the ear and tongue before the words are presented to the eye. Further remarks on this subject will be found in the last chapter. It is impossible to over-estimate the importance of this subject as bearing upon education. The whole science of education may be said to be embraced in the question of "How to improve the memory?" It includes not merely the cultivation of the different mental faculties and furnishing them with knowledge, but the training of the senses, and the developing of the various physical powers. Every act in the training or cultivation of any power or faculty depends on memory; all the habits we form are built up through it. If the author's views on this subject are correct, then the whole system of education as at present conducted is on a wrong basis. Instead of the communication of knowledge being made the means of improving the memory, the interests of the memory are sacrificed in order that it may be crammed with as much knowledge as possible without regard to the permanent injury that may thereby be done to it. It has been the author's endeavour throughout the volume to bring out the practical bearings of his views upon education. In dealing with this subject the author has found himself in a great measure on unexplored territory. No other writer on Memory or Mnemonics has, so far as he is aware, taken up the same ground. Even the authors he has followed, and to whom he feels deeply indebted for the support they have afforded him, he has frequently had occasion to differ from. While, therefore, he has endeavoured to express his views with all clearness, he trusts he has also done so with modesty, knowing how liable one is to err in such circumstances, and how little one individual mind can do towards perfecting the knowledge of such a subject, which calls for the combined labour of many minds working in different fields, in philosophy, in physiology, in education, etc. LONDON, January, 1888 CONTENTS CHAPTER I. MEMORY: WHAT IT IS CHAPTER II. MATTER AND MIND CHAPTER III. THE BODY CHAPTER IV. THE SENSES CHAPTER V. MENTAL IMAGES CHAPTER VI. MIND, CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS. CHAPTER VII. ATTENTION CHAPTER VIII. ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS CHAPTER IX. MEMORY: How TO IMPROVE IT. INDEX End of Preview. RETURN to Main Titles Index or Family Affairs - Education
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