While the question of improving the memory is somewhat in dispute, [Footnote: See Educational Review for June, 1908.] and some psychologists assert that any kind of memorizing will have some effect on all other kinds, it is safe to say that mere exercise of memory is, for all practical purposes, useless as a means of strengthening general memory. Only those things, therefore, should be memorized that are intrinsically worthy of being reproduced.
3. By improving the method of memorizing.
Even though a person's native retentive power cannot be improved, the skill with which he uses whatever power he has can be increased. Men who lift pianos find the work very difficult at first; but soon it becomes reasonably easy. The greater ease is not due to any marked increase in strength, but rather to increased skill in using strength. It is due to improvement in method; they learn how.
So it may be with memorizing. A large portion of such work is usually awkward, consisting of repetitions that consume much time and energy. But it is possible so to improve the method that memory tasks will occupy comparatively little time.
How facts are recalled.
Before discussing ways in which the method of memorizing can be improved, it is necessary to consider how facts are recalled.
Impressions are not stored away in the brain, and afterward recalled, in an isolated state, or independently of one another. On the contrary, they are more or less intimately related as they are learned, and recall always takes place through association of some sort. "Whatever appears in the mind must be introduced; and, when introduced, it is as the associate of something already there." [Footnote: James's Talks to Teachers, p. 118.]
The breakfast I ate this morning recalls the persons who sat around the table; memory of one of those persons reminds me of a task that I was to attend to to-day; that task suggests the fact that I must also go to the bank to get some money, etc. Thus every fact that is recalled is marshaled forth by the aid of some other that is connected with it, and which acts as the cue to it. This is so fully true that there is even the possibility of tracing our sequence of ideas backward step by step as far as we wish. "The laws of association govern, in fact, all the trains of our thinking which are not interrupted by sensations breaking on us from without," says James. [Footnote: Ibid.]
How method of memorizing may be improved.
Since any idea is recalled through its connection with other ideas, the greater the number and the closeness of such relations, the better chance it stands to be reproduced. Improvement in one's method of memorizing, in other words, must consist mainly in increasing the number and closeness of associations among facts. A list of unrelated words is extremely difficult to remember; every additional relation furnishes a new approach to any fact; and, the closer this relation, the more likely it is to cause the reproduction.