Many educators now-a-days are accustomed to speak slightly of the
old-fashioned plan of committing to memory verses of Scripture, hymns,
catechisms, creeds, and other formulas of doctrine and sentiment in
religion and science. Many speak disparagingly even of memory itself,
and profess to think it a faculty of minor importance, regarding its
cultivation as savoring of old-fogyism, and sneering at all memoriter
exercises among children as the chattering of parrots. It is never
without amazement that I hear such utterances. Memory is God's gift, by
which alone we are able to retain our intellectual acquisitions. Without
it, study is useless, and education simply an impossibility. Without it,
there could be no such thing as growth in knowledge. We could know no
more to-day than we knew yesterday, or last week, or last year. The man
would be no wiser than the boy. Without this faculty, the mind would be,
not as now like the prepared plate which the photographer puts in his
camera, and which retains indelibly on its surface the impressions of
whatever objects pass before it; but would rather be like the window
pane, before which passes from day to day the gorgeous panorama of
nature, transmitting with equal and crystalline clearness the golden
glory of the sun, the pale rays of the moon and stars, the soft green of
meadow and woodland, images of beauty and loveliness, of light and
shade, from every object on the earth and in the heavens; but retaining
on its own surface not a line or a tint of the millions of rays that
have passed through its substance, and remaining to the end the same bit
of transparent glass, unchanged, unprofited by the countless changes it
has received and transmitted.
Memory alone gives value to the products of every other faculty,
stamping them with the seal of possessorship, and making them truly
ours. In vain reason forges its bolts, in vain imagination paints its
scenes, in vain the senses give us a knowledge of the shapes and forms
of external nature, in vain ideas of any sort or from any source come
into our minds, unless we have the power to retain and fix them there,
and make them a part of our accumulated intellectual wealth. To do this
is the office of memory, and whatever increases the activity and power
of the memory, gives at once value and growth to every other power.
Memory has been well called the store-house of our ideas. The
illustration is true not only in its main feature, but in many of the
minor details. The value of what a man puts away in a store-house
depends much upon the order and system with which the objects are
stored. The wise and thrifty merchant has bins and boxes and
compartments and pigeon-holes, all arranged with due order and symmetry,
and every item of goods, as it is added to his stock, is put away at
once in its appropriate place, where he can lay his hands upon it
whenever it is wanted. There should be a like method and system in our
mental accumulations. The remembrance of facts and truths is of little
value to us unless we can remember them in their connections, and can so
remember them as to be able to lay our hands upon any particular thought
or fact just when and where it is wanted. Many persons read and study
voraciously, filling their minds most industriously with knowledge, but
such a confusion of ideas prevails throughout their intellectual
store-house, that their very wealth is only an embarrassment to them.
The very first rule to be observed, therefore, in cultivating the
memory, is to reduce our knowledge to some system. Those who are charged
with the training of the young should seek not only to store their minds
with ideas, but to present these ideas to them in well ordered shapes
and forms, and in due logical order and coherence. Hence the peculiar
value of requiring children at the proper age to commit to memory the
grand formulas of Christian doctrine, on which, in every church, its
wisest and ablest men have expended their strength in placing great
truths in connected and logical order and dependence. The creeds and
catechisms of the Christian church are among the best products of the
human intellect as mere specimens of verbal statement, and are valuable,
if for nothing else, as a means for exercising the memory. A child who
has thoroughly mastered a good catechism has his intellectual
store-house already reduced to some order and system. His mind is not
the chaos that we so often find in those children who are gathered into
our mission schools.
The objects that are put away for safe-keeping differ in one respect
from those things which are stored away in the memory. The material
object is the same, whether we visit and inspect it from day to day or
not. The banker's dollars are not increased in fineness or value by his
handling them over carefully every day. Not so with intellectual coin.
The more frequently we re-examine our knowledge and pass it under
review, the more does it become fixed in its character, the more full
and exact in its proportions. Handling it does not wear it out. Even
giving it away does not diminish it. In short, so far as the cultivation
of the memory is concerned, the next best thing we can do, after
reducing our knowledge to due order, is to give it a frequent and
thorough re-examination. Constant, almost endless repetition is the
inexorable price of sound mental accumulation.
A distinction is to be made between memory as a power of the mind and
the remembrance of particular facts. One or two examples will illustrate
this difference. The late Dr. Addison Alexander, of the Theological
Seminary at Princeton, had memory as an intellectual power to a degree
almost marvellous. The following instance may be cited. On one occasion,
a large class of forty or fifty were to be matriculated in the Seminary
in the presence of the Faculty. The ceremony of matriculation was very
simple. The professors and the new students being all assembled, in a
large hall, each student in turn presented himself before the
professors, had his credentials examined by them, and if the same proved
satisfactory, entered his name in full and his residence, in the
register. When the matriculation was complete and the students had
retired, there was some bantering among the professors as to which of
them should take the register home and prepare from it an alphabetical
roll,--a work always considered rather tedious and irksome. After a
little hesitation, Dr. Alexander said, "There is no need of taking the
register home; I will make the roll for you;" and, taking a sheet of
paper, at once, from memory, without referring to the register, and
merely from having heard the names as they were recorded, he proceeded
to make out the roll, giving the names in full and giving them in their
alphabetical order. This was a prodigious feat of pure memory; for in
order to make the alphabetical arrangement in his mind, before
committing it to paper, he must have had the entire mass of names
present in his mind by a single act of the will. Some of the wonderful
games of chess performed by Paul Morphy are dependent in part upon a
similar power of memory, by which the player is enabled to keep present
in his mind, without seeing the board, a long series of complicated
evolutions, past as well as prospective and possible. The same is true
of every great military strategist.
In all these cases, there is an act of pure memory, a direct and
positive power of summoning into the mind its past experiences, such as
can only take place where, either by natural gift or by special
training, the memory as a faculty of the mind is in a high state of
vigor. But there are other cases, in which a man is enabled to recall a
great number of particular facts by a species of artifice or trick,
which does not imply any special mental power, and the study of which
does not tend, in any marked degree, to develop such power. More than
thirty years ago, the late Professor Dod, of Princeton College, in
lecturing to a class on the subject of light, was explaining the solar
spectrum, and after exhibiting the solar ray, divided into its seven
primary colors, violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red,
said, "If you will form a mnemonic word of the first letters of each of
these words, you will be able, without further effort, to remember the
order of the prismatic colors the rest of your lives," and he
accordingly wrote upon the board and pronounced the uncouth and almost
unpronounceable word, _Vibgyor_, which probably not one of us has ever
forgotten. An ingenious Frenchman some years ago traversed the country
and collected large audiences by his exhibitions of skill in this
species of artifice, and by undertaking to initiate his hearers in the
method of remembering prodigious numbers of historical facts by means of
such artificial contrivances. Mnemotechny, the name which he gave to his
invention, is merely a trick of the memory. It is a means of remembering
a particular set of facts or things by the aid of contrivances purely
artificial and arbitrary. Its possession does not imply, and its
cultivation does not produce, real mnemonic power. It undoubtedly has
its uses. But it is rather wealth gained by a lottery ticket than a
wealth-producing power acquired by wise habits of business.
In teaching the young, it is well not to neglect either of these
principles. We should give our children from time to time ingenious and
interesting contrivances for remembering important facts. These
contrivances, if judicious in plan and execution, will be great helps
to them. We may in this way bridge over the difficulty of remembering
many of the important facts and dates in history.
I would not discourage these artificial methods. Though they are mere
tricks, they are valuable. But they have by no means the same value as
those methods of teaching which cultivate and produce true mnemonic
power. This power, like every other mental power, is given in unequal
measure to different individuals. Like every other mental power, also,
it grows mainly by exercise. No power of the mind is more capable of
development. I have mentioned some things which tend to the growth of
this power, such as presenting knowledge to children in logical and
orderly arrangement, and frequent re-examination of knowledge already
obtained. Perhaps there is no quickener and invigorator of the memory
equal to that of reciting to a judicious teacher before a large class of
fellow-students. By a proper and skilful use of the art of questioning,
under the excitement of answering before a large class, the mnemonic
power is subjected to a healthy and invigorating test, and all such
exercises promote powerfully the mental growth. A child may absorb
knowledge by mere solitary reading and study, just as a sponge absorbs
water, but the knowledge so acquired readily evaporates, or is squeezed
out. Something is needed to fix in the mind the knowledge that has been
lodged there, and no process is more effectual to this end than that of
class recitation. It is by telling other people what we have learned,
that we learn it more effectually, and make it more completely our own.
A good teacher, by good methods of recitation, can do more than all
other persons and all other things to secure a sound and healthy growth
of memory in the young.
Another thing highly necessary in cultivating a really good memory, is
attaining the utmost possible clearness in our ideas. If the knowledge,
when it first comes into the mind, is clearly and sharply defined, so
that we really know a thing, instead of having vague and confused
notions about it, we shall be the more likely to remember it
permanently. Nothing is more conducive towards giving these sharp and
definite impressions than the use of visible illustrations. Actual
exhibition before a class of the objects talked about, actual
experiments of the operations described, and the constant use of the
chalk and the blackboard, presenting even abstract truths in concrete
and visible symbols, as is done in algebra, chemistry, and logic, are
among the means by which, chiefly, knowledge becomes well defined to the
mind. Such is the constitution of the mind, that we have a clearer
apprehension of what we see than of what comes to us through any other
sense, and the knowledge which comes to us by means of the sight, is, of
all kinds of knowledge, the most lasting and the most easily recalled.
Hence, in teaching, it is hardly possible to exaggerate the importance
of visible illustration.
Another condition extremely favorable to the growth of memory, is the
existence of a considerable degree of mental excitement at the time that
knowledge enters the mind. Metals weld easily only at a white heat. If
we would obtain a vigorous grasp of knowledge, and incorporate it
thoroughly into our other mental products, so that it shall become
really ours, there should be the glow of mental heat at the time of our
acquiring such knowledge. Ideas that come into the mind when we are in
an apathetic state, make no permanent lodgment. Hence the importance of
exciting a lively interest in that which is the subject of study. If the
teacher has failed to excite this interest, and finds in his class no
animation, no sympathy, no eagerness of attention, he may be sure that
he is not accomplishing much. The child must, if possible, acquire a
fondness for that which is to be remembered. Love, in fact, is the
parent of memory.