Making the Most of One's Mind/Chapter 3
MANIPULATION OF THE MEMORY
NO apology is necessary for giving to memory a chapter all to itself. It is recognized as one of the fundamental qualities of human nature and the basis of our self-identity. Without memory our individual existence would lose all meaning. We know that we are the same persons that we were last year, because we remember the experience we then had. Memory bridges over the gulf of time and convinces us of the continuity of our own personality.
But while this is true for people in general, for the student the memory has a rather special significance. It has to do with the retention of knowledge, which is the student's special business. We can all acquire, at any given time, a mastery over certain facts, but if we are unable to retain that mastery our labour in acquiring it is wasted. Students are only too willing to admit the weakness of their memory and to lay to that score a great many of their failures. Now it has to be admitted that much depends upon the quality of the memory with which cach student starts. A memory that retains well and reproduces easily is certainly a great advantage to a student. It is idle to say that "mere memory" is in itself something rather contemptible. There is a popular impression that intellect and memory do not, as a rule, go together, that the man who has really good brain power is usually indifferently gifted in the matter of mere memory. But experience does not bear this out. There are people, to be sure, who have great power of memory and little power of thinking. These, by depending entirely upon their memory, sometimes bring the memory into disrepute. But, on the other hand, people of great intellectual power who have also excellent memories are those who rise to the highest levels. Both qualities are needed to make a really efficient student. It is sometimes said that a man may have too good a memory. When he wishes to recall something that he wants, his memory shoots out before him all manner of things that he does not want along with the one thing that he does want, so that he is confused with the richness of the store. But this does not imply that the man's memory is too good, but only that it is not properly managed. The natural quality of the memory is one thing, the management of the memory is another.
Of the two, the management is in the hands of the student. The natural quality he must take as something given, something that cannot be changed. You are probably surprised to hear this, as you have no doubt heard and read a great deal about the improvement of the memory. Psychologists are not yet quite agreed about the matter, but you will find that the balance of opinion is entirely against the possibility of improving the original, or what may be called the "brute," memory. We are born into the world with a memory of a certain degree of retentiveness and power of recall. And with that memory we must go through the world, making the best use of it that we can. We may use it wisely or foolishly—and for this we are responsible—but we have only that one memory to use, we cannot improve its intrinsic quality. It is true that we can do something even on the physical side to keep the memory at its best. Wholesome living has a great deal to do with the working of the memory. Overwork, overfeeding, overdrinking, indulgence of every kind, all have a marked effect on the brute memory. Even young people notice how badly the memory works when they are fatigued, and experience proves that certain diseases resulting from excess show their beginnings by a gradual weakening of the brute memory. The one way that you can get at this brute memory so as to keep it at its best is by sensible and cleanly living.
But though we cannot improve the brute memory, we may greatly increase its effectiveness by manipulating it properly. To do this it is necessary to examine what sort of memory we have got, and to discover how we may best use it. In order that we may remember something, we must impress it upon our minds with a certain degree of force. Some minds require a good deal of force, others require very little. The less initial force required the better the memory is said to be. Suppose you and a friend test yourselves by trying how often each of you must read over a little poem before you are able to reproduce it perfectly by memory. It may be that by reading it over say four times you have mastered it, while your friend has to read it over twelve times before he succeeds. In that case your memories stand to one another in the ratio of four to twelve: this means that your friend requires three times as much initial force as you do in order to master the poem. Your memory, in fact, may be said to be three times as good as his. If you like to put it in that way, his index of memory is one while your index is three. Teachers are now beginning to look into this matter, and in the future they will probably all arrange for giving an index for every pupil in a class. The boy with the poorest memory will have the index one, the boy with the best memory the index ten, and all the rest will be arranged somewhere between, so that every pupil in the class will know his actual rank with regard to memory—or at anyrate the teacher will, for he may not consider it wise to share his knowledge with the pupils, especially at early stages. In the higher classes, no doubt, it is well that the pupils should know their own indexes.
But your investigation of your own memory is not yet complete. You must not forget that though it has cost your friend three times as much effort as you, the result in his case is the same as in yours. You have both mastered the poem. You have both the same possession, though you have bought it at different rates. To this extent you have a distinct advantage as a student over your friend. But there is another test to be made. Next morning, let both of you try to repeat the poem and note how many mistakes each of you makes. Do the same thing three days later, then a week later, then a month later, then three months later. It may come out that though you learnt the poem three times more easily than your friend, he may remember it accurately twice as long. You will, of course, see that we cannot have very exact results in a case like this. When we say that you forget twice as much as your friend we must be understood to speak in a rather general way. What we are doing is to establish a rough and ready index of forgetfulness or obliviscence. In this case your index of obliviscence would be two to your friend's one. So that in estimating the index of really efficient memory you would not rank very much above your friend, for your greater ease of learning would be balanced by his power of retaining longer an accurate knowledge of what he had learned. All these things will be kept in view by the teacher in the future when he is estimating the powers of his pupils, and he may either have two indexes for each pupil, an index of quickness of learning and an index of obliviscence, or he may amalgamate the two and find a composite index of memory "efficiency."
But suppose now that you surpass your friend in both case of acquiring and power of retaining accurately, you have that permanent advantage over him as a student. Suppose, further, that you and he do exactly the same kind of work and put out exactly the same amount of energy in the same way for ten years, then at the end of that period you will almost certainly stand in the same relative position to one another, so far as the natural power of memory is concerned. You will still retain your initial advantage: your index of memory will remain the same in relation to his. No doubt you will have acquired more knowledge than he during the ten years, but that is beside the present point.
If, however, during these ten years you rely upon your superior natural gifts, while your friend, realizing his disadvantage, puts extra energy into his work and uses his poorer memory energetically and skilfully, and seeks out the best ways of manipulating it, the result at the end of the ten years may well be that he can use his memory so as to produce results as easily and as quickly as you. But this does not mean that his brute memory has been improved, but only that he has learnt to use it in a more skilful way, and in particular to apply it more effectively in connexion with certain definite kinds of facts.
This last point is of special importance, for experience shows that improvement in the memory is always improvement in a certain direction, that is, in connexion with a particular kind of matter. Indeed, it is sometimes said that we have all excellent memories for something or other. School-masters are well aware that the boy who cannot anchor the battle of Marathon to any fixed date, has no difficulty in reeling off an interminable list of "football fixtures" for the coming season. The girl who can never be sure whether Bombay is on the east or on the west coast of India, will remember in the minutest detail the position of a ribbon on a hat that she saw weeks ago in a shop window. This does not mean that we have different kinds of memories—a football memory and a history memory, a millinery memory and a geography memory—but merely that we remember different kinds of things with different degrees of ease and accuracy. The natural interest of a boy in football is replaced in the future by the acquired interest in the affairs of his business or his profession. He can, in adult life, remember business matters even though his memory for other things is very bad. Sometimes, indeed, he can remember business things only in connexion with business. A psychologist gives a case, for example, in which a ticket-clerk could remember all about fares and distances and connexions while he was in his little office, but the moment he left it he could give no reliable information even about his own line. Memory improvement nearly always means improvement in dealing with a particular class of facts.
The minimum initial force necessary to impress something on the mind so as to secure its retention may be applied all at one time, or it may be applied at different times by instalments. Suppose we had a standard unit of force, say one second of the most intense attention of which we are capable, and that ten of these units were necessary to commit a particular fact to memory. Then we might either give the ten seconds consecutively, or in separate instalments. Thus we might give ten separate seconds with an interval between each, or five periods of two seconds with an interval between each period. The intervals may be long or short, so that quite a number of considerations claim attention. The important question is, which is the better way of learning, the condensed application or the instalment system? Often we have no choice. Certain matters must be committed to the memory at once, or our chance is for ever gone. But, on the other hand, there are occasions when we do have the choice between the two methods, and our general principle should be that in cases of small portions of subject-matter the condensed form is the better, whereas when we have to face a longish bit of work the instalment system is more profitable. What we considered already in connexion with the distribution of your time among your various subjects applies here. You have all the advantage of unconscious cerebration between the different instalments. It is true that we have here certain considerations that do not apply to the same degree in the process of learning as opposed to remembering. We have to realize that the rate at which we forget has to be taken into account. If we have a high "index of obliviscence" then it may be less advisable for us to adopt the instalment system. We may lose so much between the instalments as to cause an unprofitable amount of relearning. If your obliviscence index is small, you are safe to adopt the instalment system. If it is large, you have to choose between avoiding the instalment system altogether, and adopting it with the modification that there must be the smallest practicable interval between each instalment. The latter alternative must be adopted in all cases where, from the nature of the case, the concentrated method cannot be applied. Such cases are continually occurring, since many things have to be committed to memory that are so complicated that they cannot be all mastered at one sitting.
The use of the phrase "committing to memoгy" is apt to be confusing, as it has at least the suggestion of that kind of memory work known as learning by rote. This means getting into the memory a form of words without paying any attention to the meaning. Sometimes a distinction is drawn between learning by heart and learning by rote. As a rule the terms are used interchangeably, but, if they must be distinguished, learning by heart may be said to be learning a subject in such a way that it becomes a part of our very self. We deal with the matter so thoroughly that we actually assimilate it. Rote-learning, on the other hand, may be limited to the mere parrot-like repetition of a form of words, so as to commit them to the brute memory without any thought of their meaning. For example, in learning the multiplication table, a child may sing the tables up and down so as to be able to repeat them either upwards or downwards, and yet be unable to use the tables unless by repeating each table till the appropriate number is reached. This would be learning by rote. On the other hand, the pupil may be so practised by the teacher in giving at once various products, such as four times eight, nine times seven, eleven times twelve, that he is able at a moment's notice to give any product in the table. In this case he may be said to know the table by heart. If there be any distinction, the advantage in such matters clearly lies with learning by heart. But it is usual to use the terms interchangeably.
In former times so much was done in schools by means of mere rote work that it is not wonderful that there is at present a great feeling against it. One of the earliest protests is to be found in Montaigne, who tells us that "To know by heart is not to know." As you will see, this statement is ambiguous. The two possible meanings are: (a) The fact that you know a thing by heart does not necessarily imply that you really know it. (b) The very fact that you know a thing by heart shows that you do not know it. The first meaning is certainly the only justifiable one. It is nonsense to maintain because we know, say, a poem by heart that therefore we do not understand it. In fact, there is a definite place for learning by heart. A person who learns by heart a proposition in geometry is not only wasting his time but is injuring his chances of doing genuine thinking. The pupil's own form of stating the proposition is preferable to that of anyone else, since it secures the activity of the pupil's mind. But in the case of anything in which the form is of the very essence of the business in hand, then learning by rote is both justifiable and desirable. A great part of the charm of a poem is the beauty of the actual expression. There is nothing more irritating than to hear some one praising a poem and giving scrappy, inaccurate renderings of a beautiful passage, interspersed with crude prose paraphrases to fill up what the speaker cannot remember in the poet's words. A poem should be either quoted verbatim or merely described. Even "rules" are sometimes worthy to be learnt by heart. But here we must be very careful. It is always wrong to begin by learning a rule and then go about applying it. But in the course of your studies you will be set frequently by your teacher to work out certain problems, and as you work them you will gradually see the underlying principle on which you proceed. By and by your teacher will invite you to set out the principle. This is really an invitation for you to formulate a rule. Your formulation may be excellent, but frequently it will be found to be faulty, and the teacher will present you with a carefully thought-out and precisely expressed rule. This it is often desirable to memorize, since it expresses in the clearest and most exact way a truth that you have thoroughly grasped. It is profitable, then, to memorize rules for which you have honestly worked.
Since there are occasions on which it is desirable to learn things by heart, it is worth while considering the best way of setting about the business. To begin with, we must give up the notion that we are to work in the unintelligent way that the definition of rotework implies. So far from it being desirable that we should not think of the subject-matter, we ought to keep prominently before us the meaning of what we are learning. If we are dealing with a mere rule, or a mere bit of grammatical accidence, there is no difficulty. It is only a matter of concentration of attention. But when we approach a work of greater length a very definite problem arises, the problem of the unit of memorizing. In learning a poem, for example, of the length of Milton's L'Allegro or Gray's Elegy, almost no one could master it at a sitting. The work has accordingly to be divided up into sections, and the problem arises of the principle on which the division should be made. The length of each section can be determined only in view of the time at your disposal on each occasion and on your own index of memory. But the division should certainly be made according to the nature of the subject-matter, and not merely by the number of lines. In other words, certain portions of a poem are more easily memorized than others, and it is therefore unwise to divide a poem up merely into passages of a certain number of lines each. We learn by following the thread of the poet's thought rather than by following the mechanical division of lines and stanzas.
Having selected a unit, say six stanzas, for a particular period, the next principle to be observed is that the unit should be learnt as a whole. This seems a very remarkable bit of advice. For we are so accustomed to learn a poem stanza by stanza that there seems something altogether wrong in attempting to learn six stanzas at once. Yet actual experience shows that it is more profitable to read over the whole six stanzas consecutively and then re-read them over and over again as a whole. It appears that the gain comes in from the carrying over of the stream of intelligence from one stanza to the next. When we learn by separate stanzas, each is inclined to stand out as a unit by itself, and there is a difficulty at the end of each in getting switched on to the proper one to follow. The advantage in time-saving of this block-system of learning by heart arises from the fact that it makes the subject-matter of first importance in the learning. The words take their proper place as the expression of consecutive thought. This makes it specially important that we should understand perfectly the meaning of what we set about committing to memory. Any mistake that we commit to memory involves a great amount of wasted time before it can be re-learnt correctly.
Do your memorizing as quickly and intensely as possible. Divide up your time available for this purpose into sections of severe concentration, separated by short pauses, during which you allow the mind to lie fallow. After committing something to memory try, if possible, not to begin at once on a new piece of work. It is profitable to allow the matter a little time to sink in.
You will, of course, distinguish between the kind of memory we are here dealing with, verbal memory, and the other kind that, you remember, we named rational memory. In the first kind we retain and recall the very words used in certain connexions. This may be done with or without understanding their meaning, though we have seen that such an understanding is an advantage. In the case of the rational memory we recall facts in their true relations to one another, though we may be unable to express them exactly as we may have heard them expressed. This is the kind of memory that enables one to give "the substance of a passage that one has read. Of the two, the rational memory is the more important, but each has its place. A person may be very weak in verbal memory and quite strong in rational memory. The two powers have no fixed ratio to one another. It used to be thought that by cultivating the verbal memory the rational memory could be strengthened. It was a very common belief, for example, that by learning poetry by heart, the memory in general could be improved. This view is now abandoned, and it is recognized that memory-training must consist in training the memory in the particular way in which improvement is desired. Practice in learning by rote only increases our skill in rote-learning.
When we say that the brute memory cannot be improved, we have seen that we seem to go against the experience of people in general, for we are all familiar with certain systems of memory-training that profess to increase the natural capacity of remembering. But all these systems depend for their success on a skilful manipulation of the natural memory the pupil brings to the system-maker. They all start by causing the pupil to acquire in the ordinary way, that is by application and repetition, some definite basework, and then arrange in some definite relation to this basework all matters to be remembered. Many of them are very ingenious, but they all demand a certain amount of initial effort, and a further effort in applying the ingeniously systematized rules. They all depend on getting the pupil to apply the ordinary modes of remembering, though these are aided by the scheme of the systematizer. One of the oldest schemes, for example, is to make the pupil imagine he has a house of a certain number of rooms, each room being set apart for one special set of facts—one room for agriculture, another for war, another for law, another for literature, and so on. Each fact the pupil wishes to retain is taken by him in imagination to the proper room and there deposited in a suitable place in relation to the other facts already placed there. This continual wandering about the imaginary house familiarizes the pupil with the contents of each room, and thus by repetition and revision enables him to master the essential details. The system-makers claim to establish a memoria technica, an artificial memory. But we can no more have an artificial memory than we can have an artificial soul.
What gives success to the memory-improvers is the fact that they do insist upon their pupils concentrating upon certain points. The mere fact that the pupil must repeatedly go over the facts to be retained ensures that he shall make that expenditure of energy upon each that is essential to its complete retention. Further, people who go to trainers of the memory want to learn in almost every case they want to learn some particular kind of fact, and all the exercises they get naturally are made to bear upon facts of this class. Accordingly progress is made. You may rest assured that there is no memory improver like the honest and earnest concentration of attention on the facts that you wish to master.
Yet an intelligible arrangement of facts does help greatly, and what the best of the memory systems do is to enable the pupil to organize the facts that he wishes to retain, The hardest facts to hold are isolated facts. The ideas in the mind have been compared to "living creatures having hands and feet." These living creatures have a tendency to form friendships among themselves and to do the best they can for one another. One of their main acts of friendship is to help their friends into the consciousness where they themselves belong and to do their best to prevent them from being thrust out of it. Accordingly the greater the number of friends a new idea can form among the old ideas, the better its chance of retaining its place in the mind, or of being easily brought back to it. The moment we can fit a new fact into a group of old facts, we have given it a chance of retaining its place in our mind.
Certain more or less artificial ways of grouping new facts with old are recognized and known by the name of Mnemonics. Among the tricks of this kind are the well-known rhyming Geographies and Histories that have had their day and have gone to the place prepared for them. It is among the best of these, Dr. Mackay's Rhyming Geography, that we find the following:—
"The states of Northern Germany
Are twenty-two in number,
The names of which I need not give
The mem'ry to encumber."
Even worse is another stanza from the same book:
"The southern half's a triangle
Of greater elevation,
With several lofty peaks that reach
The line of congelation."
What is wrong with these is the intolerable amount of scaffolding to the very small amount of structure. Further, any pupil who knows about "the line of congelation" does not need the help of a stanza to remember that the Deccan is triangular and has snowy mountains. The help given by such verses is illegitimate, since it tends to throw us back upon mere rote-learning. We depend on words, not upon thoughts. It is true that there are certain facts in our studies that cannot be fully explained at the stage at which the pupil stands, and yet must be remembered. Of this kind are the verbs that govern the dative in Latin; and many of us, in our preparatory-school days, have been grateful to the author of certain flagrant rhymelets.
"A dative put, remember pray,
After envy, spare, obey,
Heal, favour, hurt, resist, to these
Add, order, succour and displease. . . . !"
And so on. Some objection might be raised to this mnemonic since certain fairly intelligible reasons can be assigned why these verbs should govern the dative and not the accusative. But there is another mnemonic of the same kind that seems to meet all the requirements. It is that which keeps in the memory the Latin prepositions that govern the ablative. It runs:
"A, ab, abs, absque, de,
E, ex, coram, cum, pro, prae,
palam, sine, tenus."
Here there is no scaffolding at all. The mnemonic fries in its own juice as it were. It has the attraction of both rhyme and rhythm. Further, it deals with just those matters that cannot be treated in a rational way. There is no doubt some reason why these prepositions should govern the ablative and others should not, but it is not a reason that is open to the pupils at the stage at which a mnemonic is valuable. The same argument might be applied to the mnemonic for keeping in their proper places those troublesome nones in the Roman calendar. The following couplet is supposed to remove the difficulty:
"In March, July, October, May,
The nones fell on the seventh day."
But when all is said, we are not secure. May is the only month about which we can be quite certain. The rhyme fixes it. But the other months in the first line might casily escape us, and in our effort to make the lines run we might quite well substitute other months. Thus the couplet might readily go:
"In April, June, November, May,
The nones fell on the fifteenth day."
The matter of rhythm is too often neglected in the process of memorizing. If it is necessary to keep in mind a group of words that are related to each other, it is advisable to arrange them in such a way that they shall run smoothly into each other. The following illustration serves at once as a warning and as a model. It was part of the work of school pupils to "get up" all the important towns in each of the counties in the British Islands. This should have been done, of course, by making the pupils look out the towns on their maps and make a mental picture of their place in each county and their positions relative to each other. But teachers often adopted the plan of making their pupils merely memorize a list of towns for each county. Thus the four important towns of Argyleshire were learnt by rote as Inverary, Dunoon, Oban, Campbeltown. So far we have had only the warning. For in the first place, the list should not have been committed to memory in this way at all, and in the second, if it had to be committed, it should have been so arranged as to help the mind in retaining it. Note how much more easily it runs as Inverary, Oban, Campbeltown, Dunoon. If you repeat it over two or three times you find a difficulty in stopping. At least, that was what happened to the children who had the words placed in this order. If you have to get up the members of a particular ministry, or a list of minerals, that have no special order of relative importance, it is wise to arrange them so that they make a pleasing combination of sound.
We all do this sort of thing in our efforts to master more or less disconnected details. Even the method of using the initial letters of words that have to be grouped together is quite permissible. The student is assumed to have a competent knowledge of the important parts of the subject and to require help only in keeping the proper elements together, and in recalling them in their proper place. No student of English History has any difficulty in stating who the members of the famous Cabal were. He reads them off by their initials, Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley and Lauderdale. I quote this example because it is interesting and respectable. You will be well advised to avoid all such childish phrases as those used to keep in their order the battles of the Wars of the Roses. An occasional manipulation of the initials of things we want to group is quite permissible, but any elaboration of the plan is a waste of time, with the added danger of emphasizing unimportant elements and relations.
There is one particular problem for the memory that gives rise to a great deal of difficulty. This is the fixing of the alternative. It is quite common for the student to remember that a fact is true in one of two forms, but not to be sure which is which. The point is illustrated in the venerable story of the drill sergeant who asked the recruit his height, and was told that it was "either ten foot five or five foot ten." In a case of this kind there is a standard ready at hand to determine which alternative should have the preference. But it is not usually so, and the student is often tormented with doubts, and has sometimes to fall back upon mere guesswork, to throw up the penny and let fate decide. Most of us try individual little tricks to keep us right when we see the chance of our being put in a dilemma by a future demand for a decision. Here are some examples.
In French there are two verbs that have an awkward trick of getting into each other's way. Pêcher means to fish, and pécher means to sin. The student has no difficulty in remembering that the one has an acute accent and the other a circumflex, but the trouble is to remember which gets which. An ingenious teacher got his pupils out of this hesitation by saying that a sinner usually thinks he is a rather 'cute person. Sinners aren't really acute, the teacher explained in the interests of morality, but they think they are, so "you will always remember that sinning gets the acute accent." To make matters doubly sure, this teacher pointed out that the circumflex accent was not very like a fish-hook, but it was at anyrate more like a fish-hook than was the acute accent. With these two lines of guidance this teacher's pupils never after had any trouble with these verbs.
It is not difficult to make pupils understand that in the northern hemisphere whirlwinds rotate from east to west, or, as it is commonly expressed, "in the opposite direction to the hands of a watch," and that whirlwinds in the southern hemisphere move in the direction west to east, or in the same direction as the hands of a watch. It is found that pupils readily remember the distinction, but they are never sure on which side of the equator the two kinds of movements are to be placed. Here again the ingenious person comes along and explains that if we take the ordinary movement of the hands of the watch to be the standard, we have only to ask ourselves about the whirlwind whether it follows the direction of the hands of a watch and remember the following answer: North, no: south, so. This, again, worked very well for examination purposes, but the question rises whether such tricks are justifiable in our studies. The answer is best given by considering the state of knowledge of the person who uses the mnemonic. If this knowledge is sufficient to supply a rational explanation, then we should never fall back upon a mere trick to fix the alternative. The practical rule that should guide us in the use of Mnemonics is: Make the mnemonic as real as possible, i. e., let the scaffolding be as closely related to the fact to be remembered and as true to reality in itself as is possible. Another way of expressing the same thing is: Never depend on a mnemonic when you can reason out the facts from data supplied.
For example, time in New York is different from time in London, and many people can never remember whether the American clocks are fast or slow compared with the English. An English mnemonic might be that however smart the Americans think themselves, the English are always several hours ahead of them. The Americans might retaliate with the mnemonic that since England is an old and effete country, it is natural that it should be evening in England while it is still noon in America: young nation young time, old nation old time. But this is a case in which no mnemonic is required. Everybody knows that the sun moves from east to west. When it is overhead at London, London has midday, while America must wait till the sun reaches her before it can be midday there. An English watch must therefore be "fast" when compared with an American watch.
Among the most effective ways of fixing the alternative is the force of contrast. In the scale of colours the wave-lengths increase towards the red end of the spectrum and diminish towards the violet. There are reasons for this, which the man of science can give, no doubt, but for the student at an examination in elementary physics it is comforting to remember that red is the smallest name for a colour and yet has the biggest wave-length. Violet has a big name and yet has to be content with the smallest wave-length. This mnemonic is typical of the sort of thing that is most useful to you in your ordinary work. It is simple, natural, free from scaffolding and all manner of fuss; and these are just the qualities you should insist upon having in the mnemonics you use.