of life is apparently that they train themselves to learn facts in the most logical and useful ways and so get on with a little material well ordered. Exercises I. What means do you yourself take to make sure of remembering a fact? Explain why each is useful. 2. What fact probably explains both of the following cases?— A young man knew by heart a large percentage of the products of every number up to a thousand by every number up to a thousand; he could give the population of hundreds of cities and counties. He did not remember names or poetry or miscellaneous facts much, if any, better than a person of moderately good mem ory. An ignorant waiter, whose duty it was to care for hats and coats left at the door of a hotel dining room, is reported to have never made a mistake in years in recalling which hat belonged to which man of the hundreds who came to the hotel each day. 3. Which would be the better way to commit to memory a speech, to sit in one's chair and read it to oneself or to stand up, and say it out loud? 4. Find what evidence you can from your knowledge of yourself and of your acquaintances to support the following state ments: A good memory over a short interval does not imply a good memory over a long interval. A good logical memory may go with a very poor verbal memory. Very stupid people may have excellent memories. § 47. The Control of Purely Mental Connections Habit Rules Thought.—If one desires to have one fact call up another, the two should be put together. The certainty of the recall will depend upon the frequency and vigor with which the two are put together. Thought like conduct is a matter of habit, and habits result only from painstaking connections. The intellect does not work logically or usefully of its own accord, but only by being practiced in or habituated to logical and useful associations of mental facts. For instance, the person cannot help becoming intellectually commonplace who habitually listens to and participates in such talk as: "I saw Mrs. Jones yesterday. She was going down town." "She told me she was going to buy a hat." "Yes, she showed it to me this morning. She said it cost twenty dollars." "I don't believe she paid cash. The Jones live away beyond their income." "Mr. Jones' health is not very good, I'm told; it would be very hard for them if he broke down." "It has been a terrible winter for sickness," etc., etc., etc. Adult students who are by nature of a superior intellectual calibre and by training supplied with many useful systems of connections between facts, are prone to forget the bondage to purely habitual associations which masters less gifted and less mature minds. The following examples will help to make real the true state of affairs, and to emphasize the obvious but neglected practical rule: Put together facts which you wish to go together, and keep apart facts which you wish to be separate:— Children are found to learn long division far more easily if in short division they are taught to put the line above or at the right of, instead of below, the dividend and the quotient above the line or to the right of it, thus: 41 or 4 1688|422. The reason is of course that they are saved the trouble of forming a new and contradictory set of associations when they begin long division. 422 Children taught the numbers from 1 to 20 and then from 20 to 40 or higher are found to have difficulty, after learning to write those from 20 to 40, in writing those from 13 to 19, although in their first learning they had had no trouble. The errors made are writing 61 for sixteen, 81 for eighteen and the like. The reason is that they form with the numbers above twenty the association of putting the digit denoted by the first part of the word first in order and the digit denoted by the second part of the word sec ond in order. Thus thirty-eight is 38, twenty-six is 26. When now they hear sixteen or eighteen, they tend to follow the recent habit of making the order of digits the order of the syllables of the word. Three quarters of a page of a magazine contained an advertisement of the Oneita Clothing. One quarter of it contained an advertisement of the Munsing Clothing. Many people sent to the Munsing Company orders for the Oneita Clothing. Systems of Associations. The arrangement of mental connections in useful systems adds greatly to their efficiency. Just as science orders the incoherent mass of experiences of the world at large, so any individual may, by having facts presented to him in coherent systems and by being encouraged to recall facts in a logical order, become a more efficient thinker. The capacity to make connections with some element of the antecedent thought,-i.e., the capacity for partial activity, is on the whole more valuable than that for total activity. We should train ourselves to survey each fact and to select its essential element or feature to be the antecedent to the next thought. To learn the gist of a passage is thus often a more profitable task than to learn it verbatim. Apart from inborn capacity the efficiency of a man's memory depends on his general health, the degree of attention he bestows on facts, the care with which he arranges them into systems, and the zeal with which he works over these facts, recalling them, comparing them and thinking about them. Any training which teaches us (1) to consider facts fully and thoughtfully, (2) to compare them, to put those together which belong together and to study their relationships, and (3) to recall them on all suitable occasions, so as to connect them with relevant facts of daily life, will improve memories so far as they are improvable. References A. James, Briefer Course, XVI. (253-271), XVIII. Stout, Manual, 418-446. Titchener, Outline, §§ 52-55. B. Ebbinghaus, Grundzüge, §§ 60-64. James, Principles, XIV., XVI. (653-689). CHAPTER XVII THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN ONE MENTAL STATE AND ANOTHER (Continued) § 48. Purposive Thinking Purposive Thinking Equals Spontaneous Thinking Plus Selection.-We distinguish spontaneous or aimless thinking from controlled or purposive thinking. In the former ideas flow on at random, unchecked by any interference on the part of our general intentions and aiming at no desired goal. The prattle of babies, the reveries and haphazard trains of thought which come as we sit idly thinking of nothing in particular, and the majority of dreams are of this sort. In the latter some end is in view; our thoughts are kept so far as may be under control and make an intelligible sequence. The connections in controlled thinking follow the same law as those in spontaneous thinking. The difference is that in controlled thinking each thought as it comes is attended to; its usefulness is judged in the light of our general system of ideas and purposes concerning the topic in hand; it is allowed to remain and influence the future course of thought only when it seems fit. So also of any total thought, that element which seems most useful to our purpose is definitely selected, attended to and encouraged to call up its connections. In spontaneous thinking we take whatever comes. In controlled thinking we select and reject in view of the goal we wish to attain. |