Probably no psychological mistake was ever fraught with greater injury
to the cause of public or self-education than the too prevalent opinion
amongst teachers generally that "physiological retentiveness" is the
memory's sole reliance _in all stages of life_. It is nearly the sole
reliance in infancy, and a partial reliance in youth. But when an
accumulation of experiences and a fair command of language have been
gained, new acquisitions are henceforward principally made by _the
affiliation_ of one idea upon or with another or _the making of
associations between ideas already established_.
And, if this be so, then memory must be very greatly improvable, since
no mental power is susceptible of so much improvement as assimilative
association.
A good memory, whether natural or acquired, belongs to quick and vivid
_associability_ and _revivability_ rather than to mere inherent and
perpetual physiological _record making_.
After a certain number of experiences the child learns the appearance of
a square. All his future experiences, however varied, of squares become
affiliated upon, or connected with the record of this original square.
If each new square had to be separately impressed on the brain as a
distinct and independent physiological record, it would take as much
time and trouble to learn every new square as it did to learn the first
square. But the _instant_ recognition of every square after learning the
first one shows that the old brain record is used in the case of each
new experience of squares or that the new square is interpreted by the
old or original record through the Laws of Association. Again: Taking
the prefixes _com._, _de._, _im._, _op._, _re._, _sup._, &c., which are
used in thousands of cases, and the suffixes _ment_, _sion_, _ible_,
_ibility_, &c., also used in thousands of words, and using these in
connexion with the root word "Press" we have compress, depress, impress,
oppress, repress, suppress, and also compressible, depression,
re-impress, suppression, impressment, &c.
Must a new physiological record be made for each form of the sixty or
more words of which Press constitutes the base, and must a new record be
also made for each of the prefixes and suffixes in the thousands of
combinations in which they occur? No one believes any such absurdity.
If space permitted it would be easy to offer additional considerations
tending to show that after infancy and early youth new acquisitions are
mainly made by combinations and recombinations of ideas already
possessed, and not by new and independent records physiologically
reimpressed on each occasion.