Chapter VI: Part 6

The verbal memory is but one form of the mechanical memory. There is no necessary connection between persons and their names, between events and dates, between things and their symbols; these must be learned by bringing them together before the mind until by the law of association, called contiguity in time and place, the link that binds them is forged; or, to change the figure, until they occupy places side by side on the tablets of the mechanical memory. It is sometimes supposed that there is a necessary connection between the two factors and their result in the multiplication table. But the moment we construct an arithmetical scale based on the dozen instead of ten, 7 × 8 = 48 instead of 56 (the former combination of figures signifying four twelves and eight ones), and the arbitrary character of the combinations in the Arabic notation becomes apparent at a glance. Sometimes a peculiarity in a rule like that for the middle and the opposite parts in the right-angled spherical triangle may assist the memory; but in most cases the formulas which are in constant use in the higher mathematics must be fixed by the methods of drill appropriate for the mechanical memory.

[Sidenote: Pestalozzi’s mistake.]

It is a mistake in teaching as well as in practical life to neglect the mechanical memory. In many directions it takes care of itself through the conditions and requirements of a person’s daily occupation. The salesman in a large store, the conductor on a railway, the politician on the hustings remembers many things in this way, and not because they are bound together by a logical nexus like that which binds together the thoughts of a geometrical proof. Many things which the pupil must carry from the school into practical life must be retained through drill and repetition. Pestalozzi imagined that if he taught pupils how to construct the multiplication table it would not be necessary for them to commit it to memory. The Swiss teachers long ago found out the insufficiency of his method; found out that, whilst it pays to let a pupil construct the table for himself, because it increases his interest in the combinations, and thus lightens the burden of the mechanical memory, the drill must be kept up until the sight of two factors suggests their product with infallible accuracy. Valuable time can be saved if the teacher will make a list of things that must be fixed in the mechanical memory for the purpose of facilitating the thought-processes in more advanced stages of instruction and in the discharge of the duties of practical life. The following are typical examples of what should be lodged in the mechanical memory:

1. A reasonable vocabulary of words in the mother tongue.

2. A working vocabulary of words in the foreign languages which the circumstances or occupation of a student will compel him to use.

3. The combinations of addition up to one hundred, the multiplication table, and the tables of weights and measures.

4. Algebraic and other formulas which constantly recur in the higher mathematics.

5. The fundamental formulas in chemistry, physics, and other sciences.

6. Declensions, conjugations, comparison, and genders of words in such foreign languages as the pupil expects to read, write, and speak.

7. The most necessary fact-lore of history and geography.

8. Choice selections from the best literature and such definitions as mark a triumph of intellect in the history of human thought.

This enumeration may indicate the range and kind of knowledge which should be fixed in the mechanical memory so that the mind may be in possession of the best instruments of thought evolved by ages of civilization. Many of the things above named must be learned by an effort of retention, pure and simple, like that of the boy who is sent to a store to buy half a dozen sheets of paper, two yards of ribbon, five dozen eggs, and specified quantities of salt, flour, and other provisions. He may write these on paper and thus ease the memory burden, but in solving mathematical problems and in reading, writing, or speaking a foreign language it is impossible always to carry for use written or printed tables, vocabularies, and lexicons. To use these in thinking, one must have them on his tongue and at his fingers’ end. Of course it makes a difference whether one wishes simply to read a language, like Latin or Greek, or to use it, like French and German, in conversation and correspondence. In the former instance it is sufficient to learn the language symbols through the eye; in the latter they must be acquired through the ear, the tongue, and the pen.

[Sidenote: Time for learning languages.]

It is a wise provision of nature that the perceptive powers and the mechanical memory are most active in childhood and youth. The normal child is hungry for words and facts, and gathers information from every conceivable quarter. The judgment and the reason develop after the mind has been stored with the materials upon which these may act. Parents and teachers who are ignorant of this order of development often force the reasons for arithmetical processes upon the pupil when these are difficult and when he could learn the eleven hundred variations of the Greek verb without difficulty, whilst the study of the classical and foreign languages is postponed to an age when the acquisition of a new language becomes a difficult task because the logical memory has driven the mechanical into the background, and the growth of judgment and reason makes the pupil crave the intellectual food furnished by the thought-studies. It is a species of cruelty to force upon children the consideration of the why’s and the wherefore’s of mathematical operations, when learning how to go through the motions would be quite enough of a tax upon their mental strength. Some of the demonstrations in arithmetic are logically more difficult than many of the proofs in geometry; hence no pupil should be asked to pass his final examination in arithmetic before he has mastered the elements of geometry. The proper sequence of subjects is of immense importance in leading the child from the lower to the higher forms of intellectual activity. With the proper study of geometry the logical memory steps to the front, and the thought-studies should then supplant those which largely appeal to the mechanical memory.

Nevertheless, it is a distinct loss if the verbal or mechanical memory is ever allowed to drop into desuetude. On this point the practice, as well as the testimony, of Dr. W. T. Harris is worthy of the attention of every person charged with the training of himself or others.

[Sidenote: Harris on the memory.]

“If a person finds himself forgetful of names, it is a health-giving process to take a certain portion of time in committing to memory words. If this is done by committing new masterpieces of poetry and prose, or in committing to memory the words of a new language, there is profit or gain to the thinking powers, as well as to the memory. Doubtless the cultivation of verbal memory, building up, as it does, a certain convolution in the brain, has a tendency to prevent atrophy in that organ. This contains a hint in the direction of keeping up in the later part of life the faculties which are usually so active in youth. The tendency is to neglect childish faculties and allow them to become torpid. But if this is liable to weaken certain portions of the brain in such a way as to induce hemorrhage, ending in softening of the brain, certainly the memory should be cultivated, if only for the health of the brain, and the memory for mechanical items of detail should be cultivated on grounds of health as well as on grounds of culture. The extreme advocates of the rational method of teaching are perhaps wrong in repudiating entirely all mechanical memory of dates and names or items. Certainly they are right in opposing the extremes of the old pedagogy, which obliged the pupils to memorize, page after page, the contents of a grammar _verbatim et literatim et punctuatim_ (as, for instance, the graduates of the Boston Latin School tell us was the custom early in this century). But is there not a middle ground? Is there not a minimum list of details, of dates and names which must and should be memorized, both on account of the health of the nervous system and on account of the intrinsic usefulness of the data themselves? And must not the person in later life continue to exercise these classes of memory which deal with details for the sake of physical health? This is a question for the educational pathologist.”[23]

[Sidenote: Vocabularies.]

A teacher of Hebrew spent one-fourth of his time in drill on Hebrew roots and their meaning. His students groaned under the drudgery imposed. At the end of the first six chapters of Genesis, he surprised his class by the announcement, “Now you know half the words in the Hebrew Bible.” He had selected words used five hundred times, then words used three hundred times, and drilled on these in various ways until he had fixed all the words in most frequent use in the Hebrew text. It was a great saving of time in the end, and a great step towards reading at sight the Old Testament in the original. By the modern short-cuts to knowledge the pupils are hurried from one classic author to another, and hence they never master the vocabulary to the extent of reading Latin or Greek at sight. A little less haste at the start, and a little more drill for the purpose of fixing new words as they come up, thus avoiding the everlasting turning to the lexicon for more than half the words in a lesson, would facilitate progress and enable the student to find some pleasure in the study of foreign languages.

[Sidenote: Teaching languages.]

An old teacher of Latin, who had discovered this secret in the acquisition of a foreign tongue, agreed to take a small class in Livy on condition that the students write in a special blank-book and review every day all the words whose meaning they were required to hunt in the lexicon. At the end of ten weeks half the class read two pages without looking up more than two words. Their study of Latin not only gave them a sense of pleasure, but, in thinking the thoughts of the author through the medium of the eye-symbols and then putting them into good English, they acquired excellent thought-material, an extensive vocabulary, and superior skill in syntactical construction. It proved a most valuable exercise in thinking and in the expression of thought.

[Sidenote: Logical memory.]

Valuable as the mechanical memory is for the purpose of furnishing the thought-instruments, it sinks into comparative insignificance alongside of the logical memory. The latter is the memory for ideas, binding them by associations based on cause and effect, reason and consequence, similarity and contrast, the general and the particular. It is the kind of memory by which the mind carries a knowledge of the laws of science, the principles of art, the salient points of a discourse, the train of ideas in a book, the leading thoughts in a system of philosophy. It converts history and geography from a dry collection of facts, dates, and names into a living organism whose parts are internally related by a plastic principle, and combined into a whole that has order and system in every detail. How much better that a pupil’s knowledge of history and geography should be thus systematized than that it should resemble a wilderness of facts! As a means for furnishing thought-material, the logical memory is far more valuable than the memory which holds words and things by the accidental ties of sound, sight, and fanciful relations.

[Sidenote: Latham’s classification.]

A classification of the forms of memory into portative, analytical, and assimilative, given in Latham’s book on the “Action of Examinations,” is helpful in determining the relation of memory to thinking.

[Sidenote: Portative memory.]

The portative memory simply conveys matter. “Its only aim, like that of a carrier, is to deliver the parcel as it was received.” It is the form of memory that enables some people to carry the contents of entire volumes in their minds, sometimes in the very words, oftener in ideas only. The rhapsodists in ancient Greece who could repeat entire books of Homer are examples in point. Some men of superior talent have possessed this power in an eminent degree. Macaulay, on a voyage across the Irish Channel, rehearsed from memory an entire book of Virgil’s “Æneid.” It is the kind of memory that shines at examinations and excites the envy of persons less gifted with powers of retention. It may easily be degraded into a slave, doing work which should be performed by higher mental powers. Hence it has been appropriately styled the Cinderella faculty of the mind. Like the girl in the story, it may be abused dreadfully by having all sorts of useless drudgery heaped upon it. To require a child to learn the five thousand isolated facts formerly scattered through treatises on geography was an exercise as useless as the picking of the lentils which were poured into the ashes to give Cinderella something to do, and, unfortunately, there is no bird from fairyland to assist in the accomplishment of the task.

Much as we may admire the power of Thomas Fuller, who could repeat five hundred unrelated words in foreign languages after hearing them twice, it is an accomplishment not worth acquiring. As an accomplishment it recalls the king to whom a man exhibited his skill in throwing a pea so that it would stick on the end of a pin,—a feat acquired after years of patient practice. The man hoped to get a valuable present for his exhibition of skill. The king ordered a bag of pease to be given him, saying that it was all his accomplishment was worth.

There is no end of warnings as to the possible evil effects of a good memory upon the power to think,—warnings that a teacher may take to heart with advantage to himself and others.

[Sidenote: Memory and the understanding.]

Dr. Carpenter asserts that when the form of memory by which children learn a piece of poetry whose meaning they do not comprehend exists in unusual strength, it seems to impede rather than aid the formation of the nexus of associations which makes acquired knowledge a part of the mind itself. In illustration, he cites the suggestive case of Dr. Leyden, “who was distinguished for his extraordinary gift of learning languages, and who could repeat long acts of Parliament, or any similar document, after having once read it. Being congratulated by a friend on his remarkable gift, he replied that, instead of being an advantage to him, it was often a source of great inconvenience, because, when he wished to recollect anything in a document he had read, he could only do it by repeating the whole from the commencement till he reached the point he wished to recall.”

Latham has well said, “The ready mechanical memory of a youth, besides enabling him to mislead unpractised examiners, makes him deceive himself. Teachers find that a very ready memory is a bad educator; it stunts the growth of other mental powers by doing their work for them. A youth who can recollect without trouble will, as it were, mask the difficulty in his classical author or his mathematics by learning by rote what stands in his translation or text-book, and march forward without more ado. Thus a quick memory involves a temptation which may enervate its possessor by suffering him to evade a difficulty instead of bracing himself to encounter it in front.”[24]

Maudsley writes in the same strain: “This kind of memory, in which the person seems to read a photographic copy of former impressions with his mind’s eye, is not, indeed, commonly associated with high intellectual power; for what reason I know not, unless it be that the mind, to which it belongs, is prevented, by the very excellence of its power of apprehending and recalling separate facts, from rising to that discernment of their relations which is involved in reasoning and judgment, and so stays in a function which should be the foundation of further development, or that, being by some natural defect prevented from rising to the higher sphere of a comprehension of relations, it applies all its energies to a comprehension of details. Certainly one runs the risk, by overloading the memory of a child with details, of arresting the development of the mental powers of the child; stereotyping details on the brain, we prevent that further development of it which consists in rising from concrete conceptions to the conception of relations.”[25]

Here is another warning from the pen of Archbishop Whately:

“Some people have been intellectually damaged by having what is called a good memory. An unskilful teacher is content to put before children all they ought to learn, and to take care that they remember it; and so, though the memory is retentive, the mind is left in a passive state, and men wonder that he who was so quick at learning and remembering should not be an able man, which is as reasonable as to wonder that a cistern if filled should not be a perpetual fountain. Many men are saved by their deficiency of memory from being spoiled by an education; for those who have no extraordinary memory are driven to supply its place by thinking. If they do not remember a mathematical demonstration, they are driven to devise one. If they do not remember what Aristotle or Bacon said, they are driven to consider what they are likely to have said or ought to have said.”[26]

In his letter to a student who lamented his defective memory, P. C. Hamerton says that, so far from writing, as might be expected, a letter of condolence on a miserable memory, he felt disposed to write a letter of congratulation. “It is possible that you may be blessed with a selecting memory which is not only useful for what it retains, but also for what it rejects. In the immense mass of facts which come before you in literature and in life it is well that you should suffer as little bewilderment as possible. The nature of your memory saves you from this by unconsciously selecting what has interested you and letting the rest go by.”[27]

[Sidenote: Analytical memory.]

In the last quotation we get a hint of the form of memory which Latham styles the analytical. “The analytical memory is exercised when the mind furnishes a view of its own and thereby holds together a set of impressions selected out of a mass. Thus a barrister strings together the material facts of his case, and a lecturer those of his science by their bearing on what he wants to establish.”

Many thinkers sift everything they read, hear, and see. That which they do not need is rejected and forgotten. That which has a bearing upon their investigations is selected, retained, and utilized. As an aid in thinking a form of retention called the index memory is very helpful. The lawyer should know where to find such law as he does not carry in his head. Having found the required statute or judicial interpretation, he applies it to the case in hand. No sooner is a case finally decided or settled than he drops its details from his mind and directs his intellectual strength to the interests of the next client.

In this ability to sift, select, and reject, as the occasion demands, lies the secret of the success of many a public lecturer, of many a magazine writer. The men in the pulpit or upon the platform who lack this gift soon wear out; the public speedily detects when they have nothing more to give. The preparation of debates, speeches, essays, and theses trains these forms of memory. After the analytical habit has been formed, the student unconsciously, yet constantly, gathers, classifies, and stores materials for thought. The public are frequently surprised by the array of striking facts, interesting data, apt illustrations, and pleasing anecdotes with which he enlivens every topic of discussion and elucidates every subject of investigation.

[Sidenote: Assimilative memory.]

Higher than the analytical is the assimilative form of memory which “absorbs matter into the system so that the knowledge assimilated becomes a part of the person’s own self, like that of his name or of a familiar language.” The assimilation of knowledge has a parallel in the assimilation of food. The phrase that knowledge is the food of the mind has almost become classical in treatises on education. The figure of speech throws light upon the relative functions of memory and thinking in the acquisition and elaboration of knowledge. Before the food is set before the child it should be cooked and put into the most palatable form,—a parallel to the preparation of the lesson by the teacher so that he may put it before the learner in its most attractive form.

Before the food is swallowed it should be masticated, broken into parts,—a parallel to the act of analysis by which the chunks of knowledge are resolved into their elements and each set before the mind in the simplest form, in the form in which it can be grasped most easily.

[Sidenote: Transformation of knowledge.]

If the food remains in the stomach unchanged, it produces dyspepsia and a long train of bodily ills. If the knowledge which the mind appropriates is retained unchanged, it produces mental dyspepsia, and there is no real assimilation. From this point of view we can easily see why Montaigne said that to know by heart is not to know at all. Just as the food which is taken into the body must be transformed into chyme and chyle and blood before it can be assimilated, so the knowledge which is taken up by the mind must be transformed if it is to be assimilated. The best illustration of the transformation of knowledge is that given by an anecdote of Gough, which has now become classic. In a Pullman car a crying child was disturbing the slumbers of every passenger. At last a gruff miner, whose patience was exhausted, stuck his head out of his berth and exclaimed, “I should like to know where that child’s mother is?” “In the baggage car in a coffin,” was the reply of the person in charge of the child. The knowledge imparted by that phrase was immediately transformed into new thought and sentiment and purpose. There was not another word of complaint throughout the entire journey; every passenger was thinking of the unfortunate child in the light of an orphan. Their hearts were stirred with feelings of sympathy, which, in the case of the old miner, issued into will and purpose, for he got up, began to carry the little one, and did his best to make it feel contented in the new surroundings. If the lessons in civil government and history of the United States remain in the memory a mere tissue of dates, names, and events, the teacher has failed, no matter how brilliant the answers in class or at the examination. If these lessons do not issue in new thoughts, sentiments, and purposes, if they do not enlarge the mental vision of the pupils, beget in them the sentiment of patriotism and cause them to resolve that they will support the government by paying a just share of its taxes and by insisting on a pure ballot,—in a word, if these lessons do not make the pupil say that he will live for his country and even die in its defence,—then the teacher has failed because there has been no adequate assimilation of knowledge.

Another figure of speech is sometimes used to describe the transformation of knowledge. “Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit.”[28] If the knowledge which enters the mind remains unchanged, it abideth by itself alone. But if it perish in its original form, if it is changed through the process of growth so as to enter into new relations, it brings forth a harvest of thought and sentiment and purpose. The last two should be the concomitants of the crop of new thoughts which spring from seed-thoughts implanted in the soul.

That the ancients understood the use and abuse of the memory is evident from their method of teaching law.

[Sidenote: Teaching the law.]

The Roman school-boy learned by heart the Twelve Tables of the Law. His teachers were not satisfied with a mere knowledge of the words; they insisted that he should understand the meaning of the law, and apply it in regulating his own conduct and in passing judgment upon the conduct of others. Is it any wonder that the Roman people became the exponents of law and order throughout the civilized world, and that Roman jurisprudence still exerts a moulding influence upon the legislation of the Latin races, if not of the entire civilized world?

There is still another nation of antiquity whose youth were instructed in the law with the most scrupulous care. The Ten Commandments of the Mosaic Law were committed to memory. In Chapter VI., 6-9, of Deuteronomy, we read: “And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.” Verse 18 of Chapter XI. is still more explicit: “Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes.”

The exact words of the law were to be fixed in the memory, and kept both before the bodily and mental eye until they passed into the deeds and conduct of every-day life. In John vii. 49 we find the same thought: “This people who knoweth not the law are cursed.” This was the universal conviction of the Jewish people after the Babylonian exile, if not before. The reading of the Talmud has been likened unto travelling through endless galleries of lumber, where the air is darkened and the lungs are well-nigh asphyxiated with the rising dust. On one point, however, the Jewish Rabbis speak with the authority and earnestness of those who know whereof they affirm. “To the Law!” is the exhortation sounded abroad in every key. “Let your house,” says one, “be a house of assembly for those wise in the law; let yourself be dusted by the dust of their feet, and drink eagerly their teaching.” “Make the study of the law thy special business,” says another. “The more teaching of the law,” says a third, “the more life; the more school, the more wisdom; the more counsel, the more reasonable action. He who gains a knowledge of the law gains life in the world to come.”

Maxims like the following show the stress that was laid upon exercises designed to bring out the full force and import of the law: “When two sit together and do not converse about the law, they are an assembly of scorners, of which it is said, ‘Sit not in the seat of the scorners.’ When, however, two sit together and converse about the law, the Shechinah (the Divine Presence) is present among them.” “When three eat together at one table, and do not converse about the law, it is as though they ate of the offerings of the dead. But when three eat together at one table and converse about the law, it is as though they ate at the table of God.” “The following are things whose interest is enjoyed in this world, while the capital remains for the world to come; Reverence for fathers and mothers, benevolence, peacemaking among neighbors, and the study of the law above them all.”

It is very apparent that the chosen people were not satisfied with mere memorizing of the law. Their teachers sought to make it a living, regulative force in all the relations of man. Their practice emphasized a phase of memory work which should be borne in mind whenever pupils are requested to learn by heart any form of words or selection of literature. Words have no value so long as they remain mere words. When words convey the intended meaning, the more perfect the form in which they are joined together the deeper and more lasting is the impression made upon the mind of the learner. The thoughts which have been transmitted in forms fixed for ages may not produce a harvest of new thought and linguistic expression, but may issue in feeling and will, in lofty emotions and noble purposes, in heroic deeds and unselfish devotion, in righteousness and right conduct far more valuable than mediocre effusions of prose and poetry, or many of the speculations of scientists and philosophers.

[Sidenote: Seed-thoughts.]

Thoughts that are to regulate conduct and life may be remembered in the form in which a nation has treasured them for ages. If thoughts are to become seed-thoughts, their form must be changed through the process of growth; otherwise no crop of new thoughts can mature. The expression, seed-thoughts, is a figure of speech based upon vegetable life. The mind may be likened unto soil that has become fertile through the labor and skill of the husbandman. The mind grows fertile and productive by cultivation. Like the sower going forth to sow, the good teacher deposits in the youthful mind ideas which germinate and bring forth a harvest of thought, sentiment, and purpose. If the grain of wheat be cut in pieces, and then put into the soil, there can be no growth, because the life has been destroyed. The ideas which the teacher instils into the minds of the pupils should be living ideas. Their vitality should not be destroyed by dissection into fragments from which all life has departed. Sunshine and moisture are conditions of growth. Lack of sympathy is lack of sunshine. Cold natures have an Arctic effect in stunting and preventing growth. Again, instruction may be so dry that nothing can thrive under its influence. Like a drought, it may speedily evaporate the child’s love of school and interest in study. Weeds may choke the growing crop. These the husbandman removes and destroys, so that the good seed may have a chance to ripen. With equal solicitude the faithful teacher watches the development of the seed-thoughts which are sprouting in the mind. For a time the seed is hid in the earth. Seed-thoughts disappear in the unconscious depths of the soul. They are not lost. By processes which we cannot explain, they sprout and grow and ripen. That such mysterious processes are going forward in the hidden depths of the soul cannot be doubted. A process of growth may be unseen; its visible results are evidence that it exists and is going forward. If the soil be barren or the conditions of growth be wanting, no harvest is possible. Unfortunately, the unskilful husbandman always blames the soil and the weather when he himself is at fault. Unfortunate is the pupil whose teacher is a fossil, devoid of life and the power to infuse life. Under such a teacher the pupil always gets the blame.

XII

IMAGING AND THINKING

Things more excellent than any image are expressed through
images.

JAMBLICHUS.

An unimaginative person can neither be reverent nor kind.

RUSKIN.

Few men have imagination enough for the truth of reality.

GOETHE.

Science does not know its debt to the imagination.

EMERSON.

The human race is governed by its imagination.

NAPOLEON.

XII

IMAGING AND THINKING

Every human being divides the world into two parts, the self and the not-self. It would not be right to say that he divides the world into two hemispheres, because self may occupy more space and engross more thought than all else in the universe.

[Sidenote: Self.]

The idea of self is complex. It includes our thoughts, emotions, and purposes. Kindred and friends, home and country, creed and occupation, dress and personal appearance, possessions and the work one has done,—in fact, all one has and is and does enters into the idea of self. When we lose a child, a manuscript, an investment, a position, we are apt to feel as if a part of ourselves had been lost. So closely are the things of self identified with the inner self, the self in the narrowest signification of the term, that the latter is oftentimes lost in the former; and the end of existence is sought in wealth, fame, honor, social position, erudition, and the thousand other things which intensify the feeling of self by giving it form and content.

[Sidenote: Image of self.]

An important element in the thought of self is the image of self that every man carries in his own mind. This image of self is derived from looking-glasses and photographs, from the sight of hands and feet and the other impressions of the physical organism which reach the mind through the senses. In the minds of many persons the image of self is ever present, it matters not whether they are eating or drinking, walking or talking, singing or thinking, posing or working. The perpetual presence of the image of self gives rise to vanity and pride, to avarice, ambition, and other detestable forms of selfishness.

It is the province of education to bring self and the things of self into proper relation with the not-self, with God and the universe. That this may be accomplished the images of sense and the idea of self must be made to take their proper place in the domain of thought and volition.

[Sidenote: Education defined.]

Not many years ago it was customary in certain quarters to define education as the process of unsensing the mind and unselfing the will. The definition never became popular. It contains a truth and an error, both deserving of careful consideration. The maxim may signify that by the process of education the soul is to be emancipated from the tyranny of the senses and from the domination of selfish desires. The mind may be hindered in its growth because it is under the thraldom of desire and appetite. Excess in eating and drinking, in sight-seeing, and in other pleasures which so easily ripen into dissipation may check the normal development of the higher faculties. The delight which some gifted natures find in beautiful colors and good music may prevent them from acquiring the power of abstract and abstruse thinking. The things of the mind may be sacrificed to the things of sense, the higher life of the soul may be stifled through the exaltation of self and the domination of selfish desires.

[Sidenote: Unsensing the mind.]

What is meant by unsensing the mind? It may mean, for instance, that the student of arithmetic is to be freed from the necessity of counting strokes or fingers in finding the sum or the product of two numbers; that the learner is to get away from the cats and dogs of the First Reader as soon as possible; that he is to be lifted by education to the plane on which he can think in abstract and general terms. In this sense it is correct to say that it is the purpose of education to unsense the mind. The phrase may also be interpreted to imply that the habit of thinking by means of visual images is to be got rid of. In this sense it is a dangerous maxim.

[Sidenote: Arrested development.]

The first thinking of children is carried on in mental pictures. It is one of the aims of the school to lift the learner above this necessity of thinking in things by enabling him to think in symbols. These symbols are in their turn visualized; and we may have specimens of arrested development in the use of figures as well as in the use of fingers, blocks, or other objects employed in teaching the fundamental operations of integers and fractions. The principal of a well-known ward school aimed at great speed in arithmetical calculations. The results which his teachers obtained excited surprise and admiration. The test of progress was the number of digits that a pupil could add, or subtract, or multiply, or divide in a minute. The danger of this instruction became apparent when it was found that of five or six hundred children drilled in that way only one ever reached the high school, and she was only a third-rate student, who never acquired skill or proficiency in thinking in abstract and general terms. Mental energy was exhausted in the attempt to develop lightning calculators. There was no growth in the direction of thinking the laws and truths which make knowledge scientific.

[Sidenote: The thinking of savages.]

The untutored savage is guided by sense impressions; he thinks in mental pictures; he is incapable of a chain of reasoning like the demonstration of a theorem in geometry. Tribes have been found who could not count beyond three; any number in excess of two was called many or a multitude. Whilst their powers of observation were developed to a remarkable degree, they lacked the power of abstruse thought. Their descendants, who are now at school, make rapid progress in knowledge which appeals to the senses; they find more than the usual difficulty in studies requiring demonstrative reasoning or sustained effort in scientific thought. Music is their delight; they can be taught to sing like birds in the air; their bands give sighs to brass itself. As in the eighteenth century the Iroquois, who would not submit to the doctrines of Christianity, were overcome by concerts, so, in the nineteenth, the missionaries of British Columbia appeal to the red man’s ear for music in winning him for the Christian religion.

[Sidenote: Popular audiences.]

Language is full of faded metaphors which show how the things of the mind are conceived in images formed through the senses. Those who address popular audiences clothe their thoughts in figures of speech based upon the mental pictures in which the common people carry on their thinking. The ability to think in the language of science and philosophy is a later development, and those who by disuse or neglect impair their power to think in sense-images pay a penalty in losing, or never acquiring, the power to move the multitudes.

[Sidenote: Mental pictures.]

The power to think in mental pictures, or through the sense-impressions which memory recalls, varies in different persons. Occasionally the sense of touch is very active; the child in such cases manifests a desire to handle everything within reach, and undoubtedly gains impressions of peculiar strength answering its desire to know. A limited number of children in every school get their best impressions through the ear, and hence are said to be ear-minded; but the far larger proportion are eye-minded to the extent of connecting their most accurate knowledge with images obtained through vision. Similar peculiarities exist among older persons. A friend claims that he hears the voices of speakers while reading the proof-sheets of their speeches. Another friend claims that he cannot bring up a mental picture of the faces of his children and his friends, but he writes out strains of music which he thinks and hears while seated on railway cars. The power of bringing up a vivid picture of the breakfast-table, or of some scene of special interest, is possessed by many persons. They live over again in memory the delights of travel, and enjoy scenery through the vivid mental pictures stored away in the treasure-house of memory. The ability to appreciate the best literature in prose and poetry depends largely upon the power of visualizing the realities at the basis of the descriptions and figures of speech. Francis Galton thinks that the perspicuous style of French literature and the wonderful manual skill of the French people is due to their power of thinking in visual images. He says,—

[Sidenote: The French.]

“The French appear to possess the visualizing faculty in a high degree. The peculiar ability they show in prearranging ceremonials and fêtes of all kinds and their undoubted genius for tactics and strategy show that they are able to foresee effects with unusual clearness. Their ingenuity in all technical contrivances is an additional testimony in the same direction, and so is their singular clearness of expression. Their phrase ‘figurez-vous,’ or ‘picture to yourself,’ seems to express their dominant mode of perception. Our equivalent of ‘imagine’ is ambiguous.”[29]

[Sidenote: Galton’s investigations.]

The profession of teaching owes Mr. Galton a special debt of gratitude for the light which his investigations throw upon the process of thinking. These investigations were published in a volume entitled “Inquiries into Human Faculty.” When he began to inquire among his friends as to their power to call up mental pictures of the breakfast-table, those engaged in scientific pursuits were inclined to consider him fanciful and fantastic in supposing that the words _mental imagery_ really expressed what he thought everybody supposed them to mean. He says they had no more notion of its true nature than a color-blind man who has not discerned his defect has of the nature of color. When he spoke to persons in general society, he got very different replies. Among other curious things which he discovered, he found that the power of thinking in sense-images, or mental pictures, may be partly inherited, partly developed by practice, and that it may be impaired by disuse or by the habit of hard thinking peculiar to men engaged in scientific pursuits. Scientific men, as a class, have feeble powers of visual representation. He reached the conclusion that “an over-ready perception of sharp mental pictures is antagonistic to the acquirement of highly generalized and abstract thought, especially when the steps of reasoning are carried on by words as symbols, and that if the faculty of seeing the pictures was ever possessed by men who think hard, it is very apt to be lost by disuse.”

[Sidenote: Wrong methods.]

He further claims that the visualizing faculty can be developed by education. This is very significant. It shows how unwise methods may harm our children in two directions. The wrong method may keep the mind at work in the concrete when the science under consideration demands more advanced and very different methods of thought. In the other direction the mind may be tied to words, descriptions, book methods, and symbolic representations, whereas the thinking which one’s future duties demand points in the direction of drawing, mechanics, and handicrafts, in which success turns upon the power of thinking in visual images and mental pictures. One cannot forbear quoting his language in so far as it bears upon the thinking developed by schools for manual training in distinction from the thinking developed by the university which aims to fit its students for the professions and for scientific thought and experimental research.

[Sidenote: Thinking in images.]

“There can, however, be no doubt as to the utility of the visualizing faculty when it is duly subordinated to the higher intellectual operations. A visual image is the most perfect form of mental representation wherever the shape, position, and relations of objects in space are concerned. It is of importance in every handicraft and profession where design is required. The best workmen are those who visualize the whole of what they propose to do before they take a tool in their hands. The village smith and the carpenter who are employed on odd jobs employ it no less for their work than the mechanician, the engineer, and the architect. The lady’s maid who arranges a new dress requires it for the same reason as the decorator employed on a palace, or the agent who lays out great estates. Strategists, artists of all denominations, physicists who contrive new experiments, and, in short, all who do not follow routine, have need of it. The pleasure its use can afford is immense. I have many correspondents who say that the delight of recalling beautiful scenery and great works of art is the highest that they know; they carry whole picture-galleries in their minds. Our bookish and wordy education tends to repress this valuable gift of nature. A faculty that is of importance in all technical and artistic occupations, that gives accuracy to our perceptions, and justness to our generalizations is starved by lazy disuse instead of being cultivated judiciously in such a way as will, on the whole, bring the best return. I believe that a serious study of the best method of developing and utilizing this faculty, without prejudice to the practice of abstract thought in symbols, is one of the many pressing desiderata in the yet unformed science of education.”[30]

What is meant by the process of unselfing the will? If the maxim is interpreted to mean that education must eliminate the selfishness of the individual, and teach him to will and act for the good of humanity, especially of all with whom he comes in contact, the maxim points out an important end of education. If, on the other hand, the maxim is made to mean that the self, with its peculiarities, is to be sacrificed in the educative process, it carries a contradiction on its face. The lower self may have to be sacrificed in order that the higher self may be conserved. He that loseth his life shall save it; he that saveth his life shall lose it, is the teaching of Holy Writ.

Open a dictionary and search for words indicating how the belief in the necessity of emancipating life from the dominion of self has been woven into the very texture of the English language. Egotism, which originally meant the excessive use of the pronoun I, has come to signify all kinds of self-praise, self-exaltation, and to include all manner of parading one’s virtues and excellencies; egoism denotes a state of mind in which the feelings are concentrated on self. Vanity and self-conceit are two words closely allied to the natural selfishness of the human heart. The former indicates the feeling which springs from the thought that we are highly esteemed by others; the latter is an overweening opinion of one’s talents, capacities, and importance. There is another list of compound words, like self-denial, self-sacrifice, self-abnegation, which point to the importance of eliminating self and thoughts of self from the soul’s activities in thinking and willing. Virtues like humility, love, service, sacrifice, are lauded in every Christian land. They are the Christian virtues exemplified by Jesus of Nazareth, who lived to do good to others, and who died that the sinning, sorrowing millions on earth might find peace and consolation for their troubled souls.

[Sidenote: Selfishness.]

The unselfing of the will depends as much upon right thinking as does the unsensing of the mind. The untrained mind deals too much with things near at hand in the objective world; the uneducated will deals too much with the thing nearest to every man in the subjective world,—the individual self. The thought of self may enter so thoroughly into the feelings and activities of the soul that the rights of others are never thought of in the gratification of self and in the efforts at self-aggrandizement and self-glorification. Selfish desire and selfish ambition may dominate the soul and cause the individual to trample upon the dearest rights of others. The millions which some men heap up are squeezed from the productive toil of thousands, perhaps millions, of human hands. Colossal fortunes can seldom be made without reducing a considerable number of human beings to a condition of living from hand to mouth, to a state of chronic poverty. That the inordinate ambition of a masterful politician may be gratified, the hopes of other aspirants must be frustrated and their rights must be trampled upon. Hence in the end there is little happiness among office-holders and office-seekers. The selfishness of great conquerors is still more inexcusable. In the effort to gratify an unholy ambition the lives of thousands are sacrificed, their blood is spilt upon the battle-field, and their health is undermined by suffering and disease. If the men who send the soldier to the front were themselves compelled to sleep in ditches, or to expose themselves to the fire of machine-guns upon the open field, wars would not be declared, or, if declared, would soon cease.

[Sidenote: Self-sacrifice.]

The higher life demands that the lower self be subordinated, regulated and sublimated in the education of man. The individual may be taught to find happiness in self-sacrifice for the sake of others, in deeds of love, charity, and benevolence. That this may result from the educative process, there should occur a change of heart, resulting in a change of view and in a transformation of the habits of thought so that self is seen in its true relation to mankind and to God, so that the things of time and sense shall stand in true relation to the verities of eternity and the interests of the higher life.

[Sidenote: Self-development.]

On the other hand, if the maxim is interpreted to mean that any gifts _or_ powers of the self are to be sacrificed in preparation for a given calling, say for the army or navy, it becomes a dangerous heresy. The true end of education is found in the harmonious development of all our faculties. Every man is in one sense the product of countless ages and generations, and from another point of view he is a new creation fresh from the hand of his Maker, and a distinct setting forth of the creative power of Him who said, “Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness.” As such he has a claim upon immortality, as well as upon all the help which earth can give him towards a full realization of self. Every person feels that there are possibilities of his being which are never realized in this world; that it will require the ceaseless ages of eternity to unfold and mature his God-given powers and traits. Any unselfing of the will in the sense of sacrificing or checking the growth and fruition of the best of which the self is capable, is a violation of Spencer’s famous definition that education is a preparation for complete living.

[Sidenote: Justice to others.]

What, then, is the relation of the imaging power to the proper unselfing of the will and the full realization of the self? “A great deal of the selfishness of the world comes not from bad hearts, but from languid imaginations.”[31] To do justice to others, we must put ourselves in their place. This we cannot do except through the exercise of the imagination. The imagination is the creative power of the mind. By means of it we can create for our thinking the world in which our neighbor lives, and learn to understand his motives, aims, hopes, needs, and temptations. This will keep us from many a mistake in judging his conduct and estimating his character. Moreover, this thinking of ourselves into the life and surroundings of our fellow-men is a condition of success in dealing with them. It helps the merchant to sell his wares and the teacher to govern his pupils. It helps the orator to reach the hearts of the audience whom he is addressing, and the journalist to write editorials that will modify the views and mould the thinking of the reading public. Every profession and every occupation requires the constant exercise of the imagination so that we may see life from our neighbor’s point of view, and, in sympathizing with him or helping him, outgrow our innate selfishness. A hard, cruel, unforgiving man makes a failure of life even though he win riches, fame, and public position.

[Sidenote: Ideals.]

By means of the imagination we paint ideals of life and conduct, which hover before the mind in the hour of struggle and trial, luring us onward and upward, spurring us to greater effort, and giving to life added charms and glories. Without the power to imagine what is beyond the real, the workman sinks to the level of drudgery, and never rises to the plane of artistic production.

[Sidenote: The child’s imagination.]

[Sidenote: Geography.]