It has taken some time to make and photograph these pictures, practice will soon make the process so easy and natural that the same result can be accomplished in a few seconds. It is not unusual for children, after a little practice, to take a list of twenty words and visualize them in one careful reading, so that they can recall them in any order desired. Practice will do the same for all regardless of how difficult they may find the idea at first. All have the faculties, awaken them and make them serve.
The important thing is not that the child has easily learned a list of words which he can repeat forward or backward, but the fact that he has experienced the memory value of a definite mental operation. The learning of the list is merely the exercise through which the process of visualization is applied to the memory. The child may possess the knowledge, but practice is the only way to make it most useful. This same kind of exercise should be continued and will later lead to many practical applications.
Three Steps Necessary
All educational progress has three steps, To Know; To Do; To Be. What a child becomes as he grows to manhood depends upon what he DOES, with what he KNOWS.
Knowing is the first essential, but without the doing there is little result. The purpose of this book is memory development.
The improvement of the memory will depend upon what the child does with the knowledge he receives.
Sharpen the Tools
Your experience has proven that poor, weak impressions are recalled slowly and with difficulty. At the same time when you succeed in recalling a poorly made impression it is indistinct, it lacks that clear definiteness which brings assurance and confidence. To overcome this you need to sharpen the tools with which the impressions are made upon the brain. You cannot expect the best results from untrained senses any more than a carpenter can expect to do a fine quality of work with dull tools.
The senses can be sharpened and improved as you have seen in the First Book, but practice is the whetstone and every stroke will produce its proportionate result; without it you can not expect to become proficient in anything. The methods by which the senses can be trained are suggested in the First Book, and if they have been overlooked, or slighted, you can now see the importance of paying proper attention to them.