statements, may destroy the habits of observation which are so essential
to correct thinking. Mere reliance on books cannot beget trustworthy
habits of thought, for books contain the errors, as well as the wisdom,
of the ages. Errors of judgment may be corrected by thinking; errors of
fact must be corrected by observation. Many a book is made useless by new
observations and discoveries. “Send to the cellar as useless every book
on surgery that is eight years old,” said the professor to the librarian
of a great university. The order is an indication of the rapid advances
which science is making under the influence of observation, experiment,
hypothesis, and verification. Observation is needed not merely to extend
our scientific knowledge, but far more imperatively to acquaint us with
our environment. We cannot learn from books the multitudinous details
of business, or of our daily life. Books cannot make us acquainted
with the circle of friends in which we move, the pupils whom we teach,
the things in dress, toilet, and behavior upon which our standing and
reputation very largely depend. No thinker has a right to neglect these.
Many a famous professor has diminished his usefulness by carelessness in
the observation of such details. The worst failures in the class-room
are due to failure in observing either the difficulties or the conduct
of the pupils. If conduct is to be regulated, it must be observed; if
difficulties are to be explained, the teacher must perceive when and
where they occur.
Men noted for their absent-mindedness nevertheless owe much of their fame
and success to their ability to make accurate observations in favorite
lines of study. Notwithstanding the many ludicrous tales about Newton’s
failure to see ordinary conditions and circumstances, he showed himself
indefatigable in watching the effect of a glass prism upon the ray of
light admitted into a dark room. The falling of an apple started in
his mind a train of thought which led to the discovery of the law of
gravitation.
[Sidenote: Experiment.]
[Sidenote: Daguerre.]
Our best thinking is based upon experience, and our two main sources of
experience are observation and experiment. How does experiment differ
from simple observation? In the latter we watch conditions, phenomena,
and sequences as they follow one another in the ordinary course of
nature. In an experiment we change or control the course of nature by
varying the conditions and causes for the sake of seeing the effects
produced. In experiment the relation of causes and effects is studied by
adding or excluding one factor after another. Take the discovery which
made Daguerre famous. Up to his time men had tried in vain to fix the
impression of the image formed in the camera obscura. No alchemist ever
went to work at a more unpromising task than the one Daguerre set before
himself. “As years rolled on, the passion only took deeper hold upon him.
In spite of utter failures and discouragement of all kinds, for years in
loneliness and secrecy, suspected of mental weakness even by his wife,
he kept on in the same line of experiment.” Finally an accident gave him
a clue to discovery. The plates with which he experimented were stowed
away in a rubbish closet. One day he found, to his surprise, upon one
of these plates the very image which had fallen upon it in the camera.
Something in the closet must have produced the effect. He removed one
thing after another, getting the same effect, until nothing remained
except some mercury which had been spilled upon the closet floor. This
was inferred to be the agent which developed the image, and thus was laid
the foundation of the modern art of photography.[20]
[Sidenote: Accidental observations.]
The observation of a fact often stimulates thought in new directions. In
fact, new sciences have arisen from accidental observations. “Erasmus
Bartholinus thus first discovered double refraction in Iceland spar;
Galvini noticed the twitching of a frog’s leg; Oken was struck by the
form of a vertebra; Malus accidentally examined light reflected from
a distant window with a double refracting substance; and Sir John
Herschel’s attention was drawn to the peculiar appearance of a solution
of quinine sulphate. In earlier times there must have been some one who
first noticed the strange behavior of a loadstone, or the unaccountable
motions produced by amber. As a general rule we shall not know in what
direction to look for a great body of phenomena widely different from
those familiar to us. Chance, then, must give us the starting-point; but
one accidental observation well used may lead us to make thousands of
observations in an intentional and organized manner, and thus a science
may be gradually worked from the smallest opening.”[21]
[Sidenote: Factories.]
In recent years experimental research has become a regular occupation in
connection with large manufacturing establishments. In some factories
along the Rhine upward of sixty men are employed in chemical experiments
for the purpose of finding what use can be made of waste products. In
this way over two hundred useful products from petroleum have been
discovered, and a large increase in profits has been the result. The
great electrical works spend time and money upon experiments, and
jealously censor every article written by their employees for scientific
journals lest their valuable secrets should be given away. A company
engaged in the manufacture of cash registers offers a yearly premium for
the most helpful suggestion from the men and women in its employ. In one
year the firm received over eleven hundred suggestions, of which at least
eight hundred were utilized in improvements of various kinds.
[Sidenote: Universities.]
[Sidenote: Where observation is needed.]
[Sidenote: The weather.]
These instances are only samples of many that could be cited to show
how systematic observation and experiment lend a helping hand to our
national prosperity. Manufacturers carry them on for the sake of gain,
the universities for the sake of widening the field of knowledge. To aid
in such research large endowments have been established, and many of
the common people willingly pay tax in support of State universities.
Treatises on inductive logic and on the physical sciences have been
prepared by Herschel, J. S. Mill, Jevons, and others for the purpose
of showing the correct methods of research by the use of instruments
of precision, of standards of measurement, and of other apparatus; for
the laws of thought must be obeyed in the interpretation of natural
phenomena. Although as a matter of discipline the teacher in our public
schools may well study these advanced treatises, yet the habits of
observation which the elementary school should aim to beget and to foster
are simpler in detail, more easily acquired, and, it may be added,
of inestimable value in the subsequent life of the pupils. Habits of
observation are needed not only by authors, inventors, and scientists,
but also by all other people for the interpretation of the books they may
read and for the discharge of the daily duties devolving upon them. The
engineer, the fireman, the conductor, the tradesman, the mechanic, the
detective, the scout, the warrior, must be able to see things as they are
or face partial failure. Too many of them have eyes and see not; they
have ears and hear not. The study of nature is valuable as a preparation
for life either in the country or in the city. Our rural population
have not learned to see and appreciate the marvels in nature which are
transpiring on every side. The way in which the almanac is consulted
for signs to guide in sowing and planting, for prognostications of the
weather, show how little the average man can make observations. The
printers have found it necessary to retain these absolutely unreliable
weather predictions in their almanacs; the attempted omission has been
an experiment involving the loss of thousands of dollars. The success of
the quack is largely due to limited observation. One cure is made much of
while multitudes of failures are always forgotten.
[Sidenote: Country and city.]
Our rural population would be far more contented if the boys and girls
were taught at school how to observe and appreciate their surroundings.
They have many advantages over city folks which they never realize as
sources of enjoyment. The senses themselves, which have been styled
the gate-ways of knowledge, may be improved by judicious exercise; and
the power of the mind to interpret sense-impressions may be developed
to a marvellous degree. The savages of our North American forests had
developed keen eyes and ears; the more civilized backwoodsmen were soon
more than a match for the wily Indian. To-day, when the latter watches
the trained sharp-shooters hitting with unerring accuracy a mark more
than half a mile distant, he shakes his head and walks away in silence.
[Sidenote: The child.]
It has been asserted that a child gains more knowledge in the first
seven years of its life than in all its subsequent days. If the domain
of abstract and scientific knowledge be excluded from the comparison,
this is probably true. At any rate, if the thinking which is based upon
the knowledge of facts thus gained is to be correct, the facts must be
correctly observed.
[Sidenote: Observation a source of thought-material.]
Observation is thus of prime importance, not merely as furnishing a
stimulus to thought, but also as supplying abundant materials of thought.
Travel, experience, experiment, as well as the ordinary course of natural
phenomena, furnish abundant opportunity for the formation of correct
habits of observation. The observations thus made should be recorded in
the memory, if not on manuscript. From the storehouse of the memory, thus
filled with materials for thought, the mind derives many of the best
data for reaching conclusions. Observation, experience, and reading, as
sources of thought-material, presuppose an accurate and retentive memory
in those who think well and act well. The relation of memory to thinking
deserves treatment in a separate chapter.
[Sidenote: Nature-study.]
There is a limit to the number of observations which the mind can carry
and use. Nature-study may be overdone. Mere seeing is not thinking. What
the eye beholds must be sorted and assigned to its appropriate class;
otherwise the treasure-house of memory will soon resemble a wilderness
of meaningless facts. Than this only one thing can be worse,—namely, a
wilderness of meaningless words.
[Sidenote: Reading and observation.]
[Sidenote: Teaching a child to read.]
[Sidenote: First test.]
[Sidenote: Second test.]
Reading is a species of observation. An exercise in oral reading, during
which each pupil is called down as soon as he miscalls a word, is often
an astonishing revelation, showing how few of the advanced pupils can
accurately see and correctly name every word in a stanza or paragraph.
Methods of teaching a beginner to read are correct in seeking to
develop the ability to pronounce words without help from others. Faulty
application of a method that is right in this respect may seriously
retard, and even destroy, the power of thinking what is on the printed
page. What on earth is a first-year pupil to do with the many hundred
words which he is sometimes taught to pronounce? Often words are arranged
in sentences which come dangerously near the slang of the slums, and
which no child ever hears in a cultured home. Furthermore, some sentences
in primers and first readers are well-nigh void of meaning, the aim being
to teach the words for the sake of the combinations of letters which
they contain. The first test to apply to a method of teaching a beginner
to read is the question, How quickly does it teach that which must be
known as a condition of pronouncing new words,—namely, the shape and the
sound or sounds of each of the letters of the alphabet? As compared with
the sound and the shape, the name of the letter is of relatively little
importance. Students of Hebrew may read that language fluently without
being able to repeat the Hebrew alphabet, the names of the letters being
a mere matter of convenience in talking about them. The second great
test to be applied to the method of teaching a beginner to read is the
question, Does it form the habit of getting thought from the printed
page? Grown men have admitted that they passed through several readers
before they discovered that there was a meaning or connected story in the
words which they were pronouncing. They saw and gave names to words very
much as people see and give names to objects round about them without
recognizing the significance of what is seen, or thinking the thoughts
which the Author of the Universe has spread out before them in the great
book of nature.
[Sidenote: Third test.]
The third test to be applied to the method of teaching reading is
the question, Does it save the pupil from the unnatural tones of the
school-room by training him to use his voice in the right way? To this
test reference will be made later.
[Sidenote: Observation should lead to thinking.]
If observation is to have abiding value, it must lead to thinking. This
is as true of the observation of words and sentences on the printed or
written page as it is of the observation of earth and sky and sea, of
the starry heavens above and the moral law within (which filled the soul
of the philosopher Kant with never-ceasing awe). How the things obtained
from books and from the world outside are appropriated in thought and
made our own will appear more fully when we discuss the relation of
memory to thinking.
XI
THE MEMORY AND THINKING
Overburden not thy memory to make so faithful a servant a
slave. Remember Atlas was weary. Have as much reason as a
camel, to rise when thou hast thy full load. Memory, like a
purse, if it be overfull that it cannot shut, all will drop
out of it: take heed of a gluttonous curiosity to feed on many
things, lest the greediness of the appetite of thy memory spoil
the digestion thereof.
THOMAS FULLER.
To impose on a child to get by heart a long scroll of phrases
without any ideas is a practice fitter for a jackdaw than for
anything that wears the shape of man.
DR. I. WATTS.
The habit of laying up in the memory what has not been digested
by the understanding is at once the cause and the effect of
mental weakness.
SIR W. HAMILTON.
There is no one department of educational work in which
the difference between skilled and unskilled teaching is
so manifest as in the view which is taken of the faculty
of memory, the mode of training it, and the uses to which
different teachers seek to put it.
FITCH.
XI
THE MEMORY AND THINKING
[Sidenote: Memory and judgment.]
Many people freely admit that they have a poor memory. Their
misstatements, breaches of etiquette, and failure to keep engagements
they excuse by claiming a poor memory for dates, names, faces, facts,
and the like. Accuse them of possessing poor judgment, and they are very
much offended. They fail to see the close relation between a good memory
and good judgment, between an accurate memory and sound common sense,
which is but another name for good judgment in matters that all men have
in common. Judgment affirms the agreement or disagreement between two
objects of thought. It involves comparison. How can the comparison be
accurate if the memory is not accurate in the ideas it recalls of the
things to be compared?
[Sidenote: Comparison.]
At one time it was a mooted question whether the mind can think of more
than one thing at a time. As a matter of doubt this question is no longer
discussed. For, since all thinking involves comparison, if two objects
are to be compared, they must be held before the mind at one and the same
time. A good memory is, therefore, a very important aid to reflection.
[Sidenote: Memorizing.]
[Sidenote: Two forms of memory.]
And yet Thucydides and Lord Bolingbroke are said to have complained of a
memory so retentive of details that it seriously interfered with their
processes of thought. It is commonly believed that much memory work
interferes with the growth and development of a pupil’s ability to think.
“Much memorizing deadens the power of thought,” says W. T. Harris, who
is recognized at home and abroad as one of the profoundest thinkers that
America has produced. Innumerable anecdotes are told of great thinkers
to show their forgetfulness in the commonest details of every-day life.
These anecdotes are handed down from one generation of students to the
next; their mirth-provoking character gives them vitality; they grow
more ludicrous the oftener they are told; they do harm because they
lead pupils to undervalue the importance of a good memory to those who
are ambitious to shine as thinkers. Often, after it is too late, the
student finds how he has crippled his whole intellectual life by neglect
and abuse of the memory. A correct conception of the nature of memory
and its function in every department of thought and research is of
immense importance to those who teach, as well as to those who have gone
far enough in their studies to give conscious direction to their own
intellectual life. Most writers on education have treated, directly or
indirectly, of the use and abuse of the memory; every examiner appeals
to it more or less in the questions he puts; and every teacher shows
the nature and extent of his skill in the kind of demands he makes
upon the retentive power of his pupils. Take, for instance, the lesson
in geometry. There are two ways of learning and giving the proof of a
theorem: the language of the text-book may be committed to memory, and
accepted in the class-room; or the pupil may fix in his mind the line
of argument and give in his own language the successive steps of the
demonstration. The former method is a sure sign of bad teaching and of
defective habits of study. Whenever a skilful teacher finds his pupils
giving the exact words of the text-book on geometry, he changes the
lettering of the figure, and sometimes even the figure itself. He is not
satisfied until he feels sure that the pupil is thinking the thoughts
of the geometry and recalling the ideas by the inner nexus which binds
them into a line of argument. He insists on it that the learner shall
cultivate a memory for ideas rather than words.
[Sidenote: Verbal memory.]
Does it follow that the verbal memory is to be neglected and despised?
This is the feeling of the learner who has tasted the joys of thinking;
he hates the drudgery of learning by heart, because he has reached the
age when logical memory begins to assert itself at the expense of the
verbal memory. No less a psychologist than Professor James of Harvard
has recently put in a plea for the verbal memory which, by reason of the
abuses to which it was formerly subjected, has fallen into such disuse
that pupils on reaching the high school are often unable to quote a
single stanza of poetry. In his “Talks on Psychology to Teachers” he
says,—
“The older pedagogic method of learning things by rote, and reciting them
parrot-like in the school-room, rested on the truth that a thing merely
read or heard, and never verbally reproduced, contracts the weakest
possible adhesion to the mind. Verbal recitation or reproduction is thus
a highly important kind of reactive behavior on our impressions; and
it is to be feared, in the reaction against the old parrot recitations
as the beginning and end of instruction, the extreme value of verbal
recitation as an element of complete training may nowadays be too much
forgotten.”[22]
[Sidenote: Association.]
Psychologists have shown that, in remembering and recollecting, the
mind works according to certain laws of association. Of two words or
ideas which have been before the mind at the same time, or in immediate
sequence, the one naturally tends to suggest the other. If the attention
is directed to the words as they follow each other in a line of poetry,
the memory will recall these in the order in which they occur. If the
mind’s eye is fixed on the ideas which the words express, the memory may
carry these by reason of the logical connection which exists between
them. Often the connection between the two things which are to be
remembered is purely arbitrary. Then the link which binds them together
must be forged by some mechanical process like frequent oral repetition,
or by constant gazing at them upon the printed page, or by writing them
out so that the impression made upon the mind through the eye and the ear
is further strengthened through the muscular sense. The latter species of
memory is usually called the mechanical memory, in distinction from the
memory for ideas, which has been aptly styled the logical memory.
[Sidenote: Mechanical memory.]
The verbal memory is but one form of the mechanical memory. There is no
necessary connection between persons and their names, between events
and dates, between things and their symbols; these must be learned by
bringing them together before the mind until by the law of association,
called contiguity in time and place, the link that binds them is forged;
or, to change the figure, until they occupy places side by side on the
tablets of the mechanical memory. It is sometimes supposed that there is
a necessary connection between the two factors and their result in the
multiplication table. But the moment we construct an arithmetical scale
based on the dozen instead of ten, 7 × 8 = 48 instead of 56 (the former
combination of figures signifying four twelves and eight ones), and the
arbitrary character of the combinations in the Arabic notation becomes
apparent at a glance. Sometimes a peculiarity in a rule like that for the
middle and the opposite parts in the right-angled spherical triangle may
assist the memory; but in most cases the formulas which are in constant
use in the higher mathematics must be fixed by the methods of drill
appropriate for the mechanical memory.
[Sidenote: Pestalozzi’s mistake.]
It is a mistake in teaching as well as in practical life to neglect the
mechanical memory. In many directions it takes care of itself through
the conditions and requirements of a person’s daily occupation. The
salesman in a large store, the conductor on a railway, the politician
on the hustings remembers many things in this way, and not because they
are bound together by a logical nexus like that which binds together the
thoughts of a geometrical proof. Many things which the pupil must carry
from the school into practical life must be retained through drill and
repetition. Pestalozzi imagined that if he taught pupils how to construct
the multiplication table it would not be necessary for them to commit it
to memory. The Swiss teachers long ago found out the insufficiency of his
method; found out that, whilst it pays to let a pupil construct the table
for himself, because it increases his interest in the combinations, and
thus lightens the burden of the mechanical memory, the drill must be kept
up until the sight of two factors suggests their product with infallible
accuracy. Valuable time can be saved if the teacher will make a list of
things that must be fixed in the mechanical memory for the purpose of
facilitating the thought-processes in more advanced stages of instruction
and in the discharge of the duties of practical life. The following are
typical examples of what should be lodged in the mechanical memory:
1. A reasonable vocabulary of words in the mother tongue.
2. A working vocabulary of words in the foreign languages which the
circumstances or occupation of a student will compel him to use.
3. The combinations of addition up to one hundred, the multiplication
table, and the tables of weights and measures.
4. Algebraic and other formulas which constantly recur in the higher
mathematics.
5. The fundamental formulas in chemistry, physics, and other sciences.
6. Declensions, conjugations, comparison, and genders of words in such
foreign languages as the pupil expects to read, write, and speak.
7. The most necessary fact-lore of history and geography.
8. Choice selections from the best literature and such definitions as
mark a triumph of intellect in the history of human thought.
This enumeration may indicate the range and kind of knowledge which
should be fixed in the mechanical memory so that the mind may be in
possession of the best instruments of thought evolved by ages of
civilization. Many of the things above named must be learned by an
effort of retention, pure and simple, like that of the boy who is sent
to a store to buy half a dozen sheets of paper, two yards of ribbon,
five dozen eggs, and specified quantities of salt, flour, and other
provisions. He may write these on paper and thus ease the memory burden,
but in solving mathematical problems and in reading, writing, or speaking
a foreign language it is impossible always to carry for use written or
printed tables, vocabularies, and lexicons. To use these in thinking,
one must have them on his tongue and at his fingers’ end. Of course it
makes a difference whether one wishes simply to read a language, like
Latin or Greek, or to use it, like French and German, in conversation and
correspondence. In the former instance it is sufficient to learn the
language symbols through the eye; in the latter they must be acquired
through the ear, the tongue, and the pen.
[Sidenote: Time for learning languages.]