This method is merely a phase of reflection, for during that process one naturally classifies his ideas, received through observation. As David Pryde says in his “How to Read”:
See every fact and group of facts as clearly and distinctly as you can; ascertain the fact in your past experience to which it bears a likeness or relation, and then associate it with that fact. And this rule can be applied in almost every case. Take as an example that most difficult of all efforts, namely, the beginning of a new study, where all the details are strange. All that you have to do is to begin with those details that can be associated with your past experience. In science, begin with the specimens with which you are already familiar, and group around them as many other specimens as you can. In history and geography, commence with the facts relating to the places and scenes which you actually know. And in foreign languages, start with the words and phrases for the most familiar objects and incidents of every-day life. In this way you will give all your mind a clear and safe foundation in your own experience.... The mind cannot master many disconnected details. It becomes perplexed and then helpless. It must generalize these details. It must arrange them into groups, according to the three laws of association—resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect. This, it will be granted at once, must be the method in all rigidly systematic studies, such as the sciences, history, biography, and politics. But it is valuable to ordinary people as well to know that the same plan can be used in all kinds of descriptions. Every collection of details can be arranged in groups in such a way that they can be clearly understood and remembered. The following is the manner in which this can be done: In studying any interesting scene, let your mind look carefully at all the details. You will then become conscious of one or more definite effects or strong impressions that have been made upon you. Discover what these impressions are. Then group and describe in order the details which tend to produce each of the impressions. You will then find that you have comprised in your description all the important details of the scene. As an instance, let us suppose a writer is out in the country on a morning toward the end of May, and wishes to describe the multitudinous objects which delight his senses. First of all, he ascertains that the general impressions as produced on his mind by the summer landscape are the ideas of luxuriance, brightness and joy. He then proceeds to describe in these groups the details which produce these impressions. He first takes up the luxuriant features, the springing crops of grain completely hiding the red soil; the rich, living carpet of grass and flowers covering the meadows; the hedge-rows on each side of the way, in their bright summer green; the trees bending gracefully under the full weight of their foliage; and the wild plants, those waifs of nature, flourishing everywhere, smothering the woodland brook, filling up each scar and crevice in the rock, and making a rich fringe along the side of every highway and footpath. He then descants upon the brightness of the landscape; the golden sunshine; the pearly dew-drops hanging on the tips of every blade of grass, and sparkling in the morning rays; the clusters of daisies dappling the pasture-land; the dandelion glowing under the very foot of the traveler; the chestnut trees, like great candelabra, stuck all over with white lights, lighting up the woodlands; and lilacs, laburnums, and hawthorne in full flower, making the farmer’s garden one mass of variegated blossom. And last of all, he can dwell upon the joy that is abroad on the face of the earth: the little birds so full of one feeling that they can only trill it forth in the same delicious monotone; the lark bounding into the air, as if eager and quivering to proclaim his joy to the whole world; the bee humming his satisfaction as he revels among the flowers; and the myriads of insects floating in the air and poising and darting with drowsy buzz through the floods of golden sunshine. Thus we see that, by this habit of generalizing, the mind can grasp the details of almost any scene.
This desire to unify knowledge, to see unity in variety, is one of the most noted characteristics of great men in all departures of learning. Scientific men in the present day are eager to resolve all the phenomena of nature into force or energy. The history of philosophy, too, is in a great measure, taken up with attempts to prove that being and knowing are identical. Emerson can find no better definition of genius than that it is intellect constructive. Perhaps, he says, if we should meet Shakspere, we should not be conscious of any great inferiority, but of a great equality, only that he possesses a great skill of using—of classifying—his facts, which we lacked.
Herbert Spencer was a master at the classification of facts. By the classification of all the known languages of the world, the scientists are seeking to find out accurately, as never before, the relationships of mankind. Men have been writing the different languages of widely diverse people for centuries, but never before has an attempt been made on so vast a scale to bring all this isolated knowledge to bear upon the solution of one great question—the origin of the human race. All scientific knowledge is based upon the association of isolated and detached facts. These are then reflected upon, and, finally, theories begin to form themselves in the mind of the student, the philosopher. He then brings his facts and theories into close relationship and sees whether they “fit.” If he is assured that they do, he presents his thought to the world, and, according to its reasonableness, it is received or rejected.
The Pictorial Method
Most children make mental pictures with great ease, but, unfortunately, as they grow older, they allow this faculty to lose its power by disuse. In the cultivation and use of the memory, however, it can be of the greatest possible help. All books of travel and description, all novels, all history, are made up of a series of word pictures. Do not be content merely to read the words of these pictures. Go further! Actually picture each scene in your imagination and you will thus materially aid your original power of observation. Let your pictures be definite, positive, explicit as to details, for the more careful you are in making a picture real to your mind, the easier it will be recalled.
Now, if you desire to recall the whole course of a book, you will find these vividly-made mental pictures have a natural order of sequence, and one will recall the next following, and so on. There is great joy in learning to make pictorial thought-links, and then in the ability they give to the memory to recall them.
Methods of Constructive Thought-Linking
We now come to the active making of artificial links as aids to the memory where none naturally appear. A thought-link of this type is the generally known doggerel:
Thirty days hath September,