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.
