1. By more of less mechanical association.
Even the simplest associations, that are largely mechanical, may be important aids to memory. For example, it is much easier to learn the telephone number 1236 by remembering that the sum of the first three numbers forms the fourth than by memorizing each figure separately. Teacher is a word whose spelling often causes trouble; but when teach is associated with each, which is seldom misspelled, the difficulty is removed. There and their are two words whose spelling is a source of much confusion; but it is overcome when there is associated with where and here, and their with her, your, our, etc. Sight, site, and cite are still worse stumbling-blocks in spelling; but the difficulty is largely overcome when sight is firmly associated with light and night, site with situation, and cite with recite. The association of the sound of a word with its meaning is an important help in remembering the meanings of some words, as rasping, for example. Professor James, I believe, tells of some one who forgot his umbrella so often that he practiced associating umbrella with doorway until the two ideas were almost inseparable. Then, whenever he passed through a doorway on his way out of doors, he was reminded to take his umbrella along. While there might be some disadvantages in this particular association, it forcibly suggests the value of association in general.
The various mnemonic systems that have been so widely advertised have usually been nothing more than plans for the mechanical association of facts. Sometimes, to be sure, it has been more difficult to remember the system than to memorize the facts themselves; yet they, too, give witness to the value of association.
I once asked a thirteen-year-old girl, in a history class, when Eli Whitney lived. She gave the exact month and day, but failed to recall either the year or the part of the century, or even the century. Her answer showed plainly that her method of study was doubly wrong; for she not only offended against relative values in learning the month and day while forgetting the century, but she revealed no tendency to associate Whitney's invention with any particular period of history. Even cross-questioning brought no such tendency to light. She was depending on mere retentiveness to hold dates in mind. The habit of memorizing facts in this disconnected way is common among adults as well as children, and as a remedy against it the student should form the habit of frequently asking himself the question, "With what am I associating this fact or idea?"
In contrast with associations that are more or less mechanical, there are vital associations that are possible in all studies containing rich subject-matter.
2. By close thought association. (1) Through attention to the outline.
Early association of the principal ideas, or early recognition of the outline of thought, is perhaps the most important of these. One can proceed sentence by sentence, or "bit by bit," in memorizing as in thinking, adding one such fragment after another until the whole is learned. But the early recognition of the main ideas in their proper sequence is far superior. These essentials give peculiar control over the details by grouping them in an orderly manner and furnishing their cue so that the whole is more easily memorized. This is true even in the case of verbal memorizing, as is evidenced by a certain minister quoted by Professor James. "As for memory, mine has improved year by year, except when in ill-health, like a gymnast's muscle. Before twenty it took three or four days to commit an hour-long sermon; after twenty, two days, one day, one-half day, and now one slow analytic, very attentive or adhesive reading does it. But memory seems to me the most physical of intellectual powers. Bodily ease and freshness have much to do with it. Then there is great difference <of facility in method. I used to commit sentence by sentence. Now I take the idea of the whole, then its leading divisions, then its subdivisions, then its sentences." [Footnote: James, Psychology, Vol. I, p. 668.]
Thus early attention to organization is a large factor in memorizing, as in study that aims principally at comprehension of the thought. Where good organization is wanting,—as in tracing lessons in geography, and other mere tests of facts,—this aid to memorizing is lacking, and one must depend more upon brute memory power. On the other hand, where the portions of one's knowledge have become so closely interrelated and so well organized that they form a well-knit system of thought, one's ability to remember may be surprising. Spencer and Darwin were examples of men whose ideas were thus organized. Neither of them possessed phenomenal memories to start with; but their observations so generally found a group of close relations to sustain them, and these groups were associated with one another in such a close and orderly way, that the outline of the whole could be easily surveyed, and any fact could be quickly reproduced, just as any book can be speedily found in a well-organized library. Thus, as we grow older, if the organization of our knowledge is improving, the power of reproducing it will likewise be increasing.
(2) Through comparisons.
Comparisons are another means of establishing valuable thought connections. Study by topics, also, furnishes special opportunity for comparisons. "It is generally better," says James Baldwin, "to learn what different writers have thought and said concerning that matter of which you are making a special study. Not many books are to be read hastily through." [Footnote: James Baldwin, The Book Lover, p. 43.] Koopman likewise declares, "A single trial will prove to any student the superiority, in interest, of the topical and comparative over the chronological and consecutive method of studying history." [Footnote: Koopman, Mastery of Books, p. 43.] Again, "The student who has not known the pleasure of reading all the works of an author, as a study in personality, has a great source of enjoyment still before him." [Footnote: Ibid., p. 44.]