The Faculty of Memory.
To every reader nothing can be more important than that faculty of the mind which we call memory. The retentive memory instinctively stores up the facts, ideas, imagery, and often the very language found in books, so clearly that they become available at any moment in after life. The tenacity of this hold upon the intellectual treasures which books contain depends largely upon the strength of the impression made upon the mind when reading. And this, in turn, depends much upon the force, clearness and beauty of the author's style or expression. A crude, or feeble, or wordy, redundant statement makes little impression, while a terse, clear, well-balanced sentence fixes the attention, and so fastens itself in the memory. Hence the books which are best remembered will be those which are the best written. Great as is the power of thought, we are often obliged to confess that the power of expression is greater still. When the substance and the style of any writing concur to make a harmonious and strong impression on the reader's mind, the writer has achieved success. All our study of literature tends to confirm the conviction of the supreme importance of an effective style.
We must set down a good memory as a cardinal qualification of the librarian. This faculty of the mind, in fact, is more important to him than to the members of any other profession whatever, because it is more incessantly drawn upon. Every hour in the day, and sometimes every minute in the hour, he has to recall the names of certain books, the authors of the same, including both their surnames and Christian or forenames, the subjects principally treated in them, the words of some proverb or quotation, or elegant extract in poetry or prose, the period of time of an author or other noted person, the standard measurements and weights in use, with their equivalents, the moneys of foreign nations and their American values, the time of certain notable events in history, whether foreign or American, ancient or modern, the names and succession of rulers, the prices of many books, the rules observed in the catalogue, both of authors and subjects, the names and schools of great artists, with their period, the meaning in various foreign languages of certain words, the geographical location of any place on the earth's surface, the region of the library in which any book is located—and, in short, an infinitude of items of information which he wants to know out of hand, for his own use, or in aid of Library readers or assistants. The immense variety of these drafts upon his memory seldom perplexes one who is well endowed with a natural gift in that direction. In fact, it seems actually true of such minds, that the more numerous the calls upon the memory, the more ready is the response.
The metaphysicians have spent many words in attempting to define the various qualities of the mind, and to account for a strong or a weak memory; but after all is said, we find that the surprising difference between different memories is unaccounted for; as unaccountable, indeed, as what differences the man of genius from the mere plodder. The principle of association of ideas is doubtless the leading element in a memory which is not merely verbal. We associate in our minds, almost instinctively, ideas of time, or space, or persons, or events, and these connect or compare one with another, so that what we want is called up or recalled in memory, by a train of endless suggestion. We all have this kind of memory, which may be termed the rational or ideal, as distinguished from the verbal and the local memory. The verbal memory is that which retains in the mind, and reproduces at will what has been said in our hearing by others, or what we have read which has made a marked impression upon us. Thus, some persons can repeat with almost exact accuracy, every word of a long conversation held with another. Others can repeat whole poems, or long passages in prose from favorite authors, after reading them over two or three times, and can retain them perfectly in memory for half a century or more. There have even been persons to whom one single reading of any production was sufficient to enable them to repeat it verbatim. These instances of a great verbal memory are by no means rare, although some of them appear almost incredible. John Locke tells us of the French philosopher Pascal, that he never forgot anything of what he had done, said, or thought, in any part of his natural life. And the same thing is recorded of that great scholar of Holland, Hugo Grotius.
The mathematician Euler could repeat the Aeneid of Virgil from beginning to end, containing nearly nine thousand lines. Mozart, upon hearing the Miserere of Allegri played in the Sistine Chapel at Rome, only once, went to his hotel, and wrote it all down from memory, note for note.
Cardinal Mezzofanti both wrote and spoke thirty languages, and was quite familiar with more than a hundred. He said that if he once heard the meaning of a word in any language, he never forgot it. Yet he was of the opinion, that although he had twenty words for one idea, it was better to have twenty ideas for one word; which is no doubt true, so far as real intellectual culture is concerned. Lord Macaulay, who had a phenomenal memory, said that if all the copies of Milton's Paradise Lost were to be destroyed, he could reproduce the book complete, from memory. In early life he was a great admirer of Walter Scott's poetry, and especially the "Lay of the Last Minstrel", and could repeat the whole of that long poem, more than six hundred lines, from memory. And at the age of fifty-seven he records—"I walked in the portico, and learned by heart the noble fourth act of the Merchant of Venice. There are four hundred lines. I made myself perfect master of the whole in two hours." It was said of him that every incident he heard of, and every page he read, "assumed in his mind a concrete spectral form."
But the memory for names and words has been sometimes called the lowest form of memory. Persons of defective or impaired intellect frequently have strong and retentive verbal memories. Mrs. Somerville records the case of an idiot who could repeat a whole sermon verbatim, after once hearing it, but who was stupid and ignorant as to every thing else. And there are many instances in the books to the same effect.
Another kind of memory may be called, for want of a better name, the local memory. A person who has this strongly developed, if he once goes to a place, whether a room, or a street in a city, or a road in any part of the country, knows the way again, and can find it by instinct ever after. In the same way any one gifted with this almost unerring sense of locality, can find any book on any shelf in any part of a library where he has once been. He knows, in like manner, on which side of the page he saw any given passage in a book, which impressed him at the time, although he may never have had the volume in his hand more than once. He may not remember the number of the page, but he is sure of his recollection that it was the left or the right hand one, as the case may be, and this knowledge will abridge his labor and time in finding it again by just one half. This local memory is invaluable to a librarian or an assistant in shortening the labor of finding things. If you have a good local memory, you can, in no long time, come to dispense with the catalogue and its shelf-marks or classification marks, almost entirely, in finding your books. Although this special gift of memory—the sense of locality—is unquestionably a lower faculty of the mind than some others named, and although there are illiterate persons who can readily find and produce any books in a library which have often passed through their hands, yet it is a faculty by no means to be despised. It is one of the labor-saving, time-saving gifts, which should be welcomed by every librarian. The time saved from searching the catalogues for location-marks of the outside of books, will enable him to make many a research in their inside. This faculty, of course, is indefinitely strengthened and improved by use—and the same is true of the other branches of the sense which we call memory. The oftener you have been to any place, the better you know the way. The more frequently you have found and produced a given book from its proper receptacle, the easier and the quicker will be your finding it again.
Another faculty or phase of memory is found in the ability to call up the impression made by any object once seen by the eye, so as to reproduce it accurately in speech or writing. This may be termed the intuitive memory. There are many applications or illustrations of this faculty. Thus, for example, you see a book on some shelf in your library. You take in its size, its binding, both the material and the color, and its title as lettered on the back. All this you absorb with one glance of the eye. You remember it by the principle of association—that is, you associate with that particular book, in connection with its title, a certain dimension, color, and style of binding. Now, when you have occasion to look up that special volume again, you not only go, aided by your memory of locality, to the very section and shelf of the library where it belongs, but you take with you instinctively, your memory or mental image of the book's appearance. Thus, you perhaps distinctly remember (1) that it was an octavo, and your eye in glancing along the shelf where it belongs, rejects intuitively all the duodecimos or books of lesser size, to come to the octavos. (2) Then you also remember that it was bound in leather, consequently you pass quickly by all the cloth bound volumes on the shelf. (3) in the third place you know that its color was red; and you pay no attention whatever to books of any other color, but quickly seize your red leather-bound octavo, and bear it off to the reading-room in triumph. Of course there are circumstances where this quick operation of the faculties of memory and intuition combined, would not be so easy. For example, all the books (or nearly all) on a given shelf might be octavos; or they might all be leather-bound; or a majority of them with red backs; and the presence of one or more of these conditions would eliminate one or more of the facilities for most rapidly picking out the book wanted. But take a pile of books, we will say returned by many readers, on the library counter. You are searching among them for a particular volume that is again wanted. There is no order or arrangement of the volumes, but you distinctly remember, from having handled it, its size both as to height and thickness, its color, and how it was bound. You know it was a thin 12mo. in green cloth binding. Do you, in your search, take up every book in that mass, to scrutinize its title, and see if it is the one you seek? By no means. You quickly thrust aside, one by one, or by the half-dozen, all the volumes which are not green, cloth-bound, thin duodecimos, without so much as glancing at them. Your special volume is quickly found among hundreds of volumes, and your faculty of memory and intuition has saved you perhaps a quarter of an hour of valuable time, which, without that faculty, might have been wasted in search.
Again, another circumstance which might intervene to diminish the frequency of application of the memory referred to, as to the physical features or appearance of a book sought for, is where the shelf-arrangement is alphabetical, by authors' names, or by the names of the subjects of the books, if it is an alphabet of biographies. Here, the surest and the quickest guide to the book is of course the alphabetical order, in which it must necessarily be found.
This memory of the aspect of any object once looked at, is further well illustrated in the very varied facilities for the spelling of words found in different persons. Thus, there are people who, when they once see any word (we will say a proper name) written or printed, can always afterwards spell that word unerringly, no matter how uncommon it may be. The mental retina, so to speak, receives so clear and exact an impression of the form of that word from the eye, that it retains and reproduces it at will.
But there are others, (and among them persons of much learning in some directions) upon whom the form or orthography of a word makes little or no impression, however frequently it meets the eye in reading. I have known several fine scholars, and among them the head of an institution of learning, who could not for the life of them spell correctly; and this infirmity extended even to some of the commonest words in the language. Why this inaptitude on the part of many, and this extraordinary facility on the part of others, in the memorizing faculty, is a phenomenon which may be noted down, but not solved. That vivid mental picture which is seen by the inward eye of the person favored with a good memory, is wholly wanting, or seen only dimly and rarely in the case of one who easily forgets.
So vital and important is memory, that it has been justly denominated by the German philosopher, Kant, "the most wonderful of our faculties." Without it, the words of a book would be unintelligible to us, since it is memory alone which furnishes us with the several meanings to be attached to them.
Some writers on the science of mind assert that there is no such thing with any of us as absolutely forgetting anything that has once been in the mind. All mental activities, all knowledge which ever existed, persists. We never wholly lose them, but they become faint and obscure. One mental image effaces another. But those which have thus disappeared may be recalled by an act of reminiscence. While it may sometimes be impossible to recover one of them at the moment when wanted, by an act of voluntary recollection, some association may bring it unexpectedly and vividly before us. Memory plays us many strange tricks, both when we wake and when we dream. It revives, by an involuntary process, an infinite variety of past scenes, faces, events, ideas, emotions, passions, conversations, and written or printed pages, all of which we may have fancied had passed forever from our consciousness.
The aids to memory supposed to be furnished by the various mnemonic systems may now be briefly considered. These methods of supplying the defects of a naturally weak memory, or of strengthening a fairly good one, are one and all artificial. This might not be a conclusive objection to them, were they really effective and permanent helps, enabling one who has learned them to recall with certainty ideas, names, dates, and events which he is unable to recall by other means. Theory apart, it is conceded that a system of memorizing which had proved widely or generally successful in making a good memory out of a poor one, would deserve much credit. But experience with these systems has as yet failed to show, by the stern test of practical utility, that they can give substantial (and still less permanent) aid in curing the defects of memory. Most of the systems of mnemonics that have been invented are constructed on the principle of locality, or of utilizing objects which appeal to the sight. There is nothing new in these methods, for the principle is as old as Simonides, who lived in the fifth century before Christ, and who devised a system of memorizing by locality. One of the most prevalent systems now taught is to select a number of rooms in a house (in the mind's eye, of course) and divide the walls and the floors of each room into nine equal parts or squares, three in a row. Then
"On the front wall—that opposite the entrance of the first room—are the units, on the right-hand wall the tens, on the left hand the twenties, on the fourth wall the thirties, and on the floor the forties. Numbers 10, 20, 30, and 40, each find a place on the roof above their respective walls. One room will thus furnish 50 places, and ten rooms as many as 500, while 50 occupies the centre of the roof. Having fixed these clearly in the mind, so as to be able readily and at once to tell the exact position of each place or number, it is then necessary to associate with each of them some familiar object (or symbol) so that the object being suggested, its place may be instantly remembered, or when the place is before the mind, its object may immediately spring up. When this has been done thoroughly, the objects can be run over in any order from beginning to end, or from end to beginning, or the place of any particular one can at once be given. All that is further necessary is to associate the ideas we wish to remember with the objects in the various places, by which means they are readily remembered, and can be gone over in any order. In this way, one may learn to repeat several hundred disconnected words or ideas in any order, after hearing them only once."
This rather complicated machinery for aiding the memory is quite too mechanical to commend itself to any one accustomed to reflect or to take note of his own mental processes. Such an elaborate system crowds the mind with a lot of useless furniture, and hinders rather than helps a rational and straightforward habit of memorizing. It too much resembles the feat of trying to jump over a wall by running back a hundred or more yards to acquire a good start or momentum. The very complication of the system is fitted to puzzle rather than to aid the memory. It is based on mechanical or arithmetical associations—not founded on nature, and is of very small practical utility. It does not strengthen or improve the habit of memorizing, which should always be based upon close attention, and a logical method of classifying, associating, and analyzing facts or ideas.
Lord Bacon, more than two centuries ago, wisely characterized mnemonic systems as "barren and useless." He wrote, "For immediately to repeat a multitude of names or words once repeated before, I esteem no more than rope-dancing, antic postures, and feats of activity; and, indeed, they are nearly the same thing, the one being the abuse of the bodily, as the other is of mental powers; and though they may cause admiration, they cannot be highly esteemed."
In fact, these mnemonical systems are only a kind of crutches, sometimes useful to people who cannot walk, but actual impediments to those having the use of their limbs, and who by proper exercise can maintain their healthy and natural use indefinitely.
I have given you an account of one of these artificial systems of memory, or systems of artificial memory, as you may choose to call them. There have been invented more than one hundred different systems of mnemonics, all professing to be invaluable, and some claiming to be infallible. It appears to be a fatal objection to these memory-systems that they substitute a wholly artificial association of ideas for a natural one. The habit of looking for accidental or arbitrary relations of names and things is cultivated, and the power of logical, spontaneous thought is injured by neglecting essential for unessential relations. These artificial associations of ideas work endless mischief by crowding out the natural ones.
How then, you may ask, is a weak memory to be strengthened, or a fairly good memory to be cultivated into a better one? The answer is, by constant practice, and for this the vocation of a librarian furnishes far more opportunities than any other. At the basis of this practice of the memory, lies the habit of attention. All memory depends upon the strength or vividness of the impression made upon the mind, by the object, the name, the word, the date, which is sought to be remembered. And this, in turn, depends on the degree of attention with which it was first regarded. If the attention was so fixed that a clear mental image was formed, there will be no difficulty in remembering it again. If, on the other hand, you were inattentive, or listless, or pre-occupied with other thoughts, when you encountered the object, your impression of it would be hazy and indistinct, and no effort of memory would be likely to recall it.
Attention has been defined as the fixing of the mind intently upon one particular object, to the exclusion for a time, of all other objects soliciting notice. It is essential to those who would have a good memory, to cultivate assiduously the habit of concentration of thought. As the scattering shot hits no mark, so the scattering and random thoughts that sweep through an unoccupied brain lead to no memorable result, simply from want of attention or of fixation upon some one mental vision or idea. With your attention fastened upon any subject or object, you see it more clearly, and it impresses itself more vividly in the memory, as a natural consequence. Not only so, but its related objects or ideas are brought up by the principle of association, and they too make a deeper impression and are more closely remembered. In fact, one thing carefully observed and memorized, leads almost insensibly to another that is related to it, and thus the faculty of association is strengthened, the memory is stimulated, and the seeds of knowledge are deeply planted in that complex organism which we call the mind. This power of attention, of keeping an object or a subject steadily in view until it is absorbed or mastered, is held by some to be the most distinctive element in genius. Most people have not this habit of concentration of the mind, but allow it to wander aimlessly on, flitting from subject to subject, without mastering any; but then, most people are not geniuses. The habit to be cultivated is that of thinking persistently of only one thing at a time, sternly preventing the attention from wandering.
It may be laid down as an axiom that the two corner-stones of memory are attention and association. And both of these must act in harmony, the habit of fixed attention being formed or guided by the will, before a normal or retentive memory becomes possible. What is called cultivating the memory, therefore, does not mean anything more than close attention to whatever we wish to remember, with whatever associations naturally cling to it, until it is actually mastered. If one has not an instinctive or naturally strong memory, he should not rest satisfied with letting the days go by until he has improved it. The way to improve it, is to begin at the foundation, and by the constant exercise of the will-power, to take up every subject with fixed attention, and one at a time, excluding every other for the time being. There is no doubt whatever that the memory is capable of indefinite improvement; and though one's first efforts in that direction may prove a disappointment, because only partially successful, he should try, and try again, until he is rewarded with the full fruits of earnest intellectual effort, in whatever field. He may have, at the start, instead of a fine memory, what a learned professor called, "a fine forgettery," but let him persevere to the end. None of us were made to sit down in despair because we are not endowed with an all-embracing memory, or because we cannot "speak with the tongues of men and of angels," and do not know "all mysteries and all knowledge." It rather becomes us to make the best and highest use, day by day, of the talents that are bestowed upon us, remembering that however short of perfection they may be, we are yet far more gifted than myriads of our fellow-creatures in this very imperfect world.
There is no question that the proper cultivation of the memory is, or ought to be, the chief aim of education. All else is so dependent upon this, that it may be truly affirmed that, without memory, knowledge itself would be impossible. By giving up oneself with fixed attention to what one seeks to remember, and trusting the memory, though it may often fail, any person can increase his powers of memory and consequently of learning, to an indefinite degree. To improve and strengthen the memory, it must be constantly exercised. Let it be supplied with new knowledge frequently, and called on daily to reproduce it. If remembered only imperfectly or in part, refresh it by reference to the source whence the knowledge came; and repeat this carefully and thoroughly, until memory becomes actually the store-house of what you know on that subject. If there are certain kinds of facts and ideas which you more easily forget than others, it is a good way to practice upon them, taking up a few daily, and adding to them by degrees. Dr. W. T. Harris, the United States Commissioner of Education, gave his personal experience to the effect that he always found it hard to remember dates. He resolved to improve a feeble memory in this respect by learning the succession of English Kings, from William the Conqueror, down to Victoria. With his characteristic thoroughness, he began by learning three or four dates of accession only, the first day; two new ones were added the second day; then one new king added the third day; and thereafter even less frequency was observed in learning the chronology. By this method he had the whole table of thirty-six sovereigns learned, and made familiar by constant review. It had to be learned anew one year after, and once again after years of neglect. But his memory for dates steadily grew, and without conscious effort, dates and numbers soon came to be seized with a firmer grasp than before. This kind of memory, he adds, now improves or increases with him from year to year. Here is an instance of cultivation of memory by a notable scholar, who adds a monition to learners with weak memories, not to undertake to memorize too much at once. Learning a succession of fifty names slowly, he says, will so discipline the memory for names, as to partially or even permanently remove all embarrassment from that source. I may add that a long table of names or dates, or any prolonged extract in verse or prose, if learned by repeating it over and over as a whole, will be less tenaciously retained in memory, than if committed in parts.
The highest form of memory is actually unconscious, i. e., that in which what we would recall comes to us spontaneously, without effort or lapse of time in thinking about it. It is this kind of memory that has been possessed by all the notable persons who have been credited with knowing everything, or with never forgetting anything. It is not to be reckoned to their credit, so much as to their good fortune. What merit is there in having a good memory, when one cannot help remembering?
There is one caution to be given to those who are learning to improve a memory naturally weak. When such a one tries to recall a date, or name, or place, or idea, or book, it frequently happens that the endeavor fails utterly. The more he tries, the more obstinately the desired object fails to respond. As the poet Pope wrote about the witless author:
"You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come;
Knock as you please, there's nobody at home."
In these cases, no attempt to force the memory should be made, nor should the attention be kept long on the subject, for this course only injures the faculty, and leads to confusion of mind. To persist in a constantly baffled effort to recover a word, or other forgotten link in memory, is a laborious attempt which is itself likely to cause failure, and induce a distrust of the memory which is far from rational. The forgotten object will probably recur in no long time after, when least expected.
Much discursive reading is not only injurious to the faculty of memory, but may be positively destructive of it. The vast extent of our modern world of reviews, magazines and newspapers, with their immense variety of subjects, dissipates the attention instead of concentrating it, and becomes fatal to systematic thought, tenacious memory, and the acquirement of real knowledge. The mind that is fed upon a diet of morning and evening newspapers, mainly or solely, will become flabby, uncertain, illogical, frivolous, and, in fact, little better than a scatterbrains. As one who listens to an endless dribble of small talk lays up nothing out of all the palaver, which, to use a common phrase, "goes in at one ear, and out at the other," so the reader who continuously absorbs all the stuff which the daily press, under the pretext of "printing the news," inflicts upon us, is nothing benefited in intellectual gifts or permanent knowledge. What does he learn by his assiduous pursuit of these ephemeral will o' the wisps, that only "lead to bewilder, and dazzle to blind?" He absorbs an incredible amount of empty gossip, doubtful assertions, trifling descriptions, apocryphal news, and some useful, but more useless knowledge. The only visible object of spending valuable time over these papers appears to be to satisfy a momentary curiosity, and then the mass of material read passes almost wholly out of the mind, and is never more thought of. Says Coleridge, one of the foremost of English thinkers: "I believe the habit of perusing periodical works may be properly added to the catalogue of anti-mnemonics, or weakeners of the memory."
If read sparingly, and for actual events, newspapers have a value which is all their own; but to spend hours upon them, as many do, is mere mental dissipation.
