Rote memorization

“ Many people could never have committed to memory such Series by mere rote or repetition, and not one in a hundred could have learnt to say them backwards by rote alone. Yet my Pupils easily learn them both ways, because Analysis affords the highest possible aid to the Natural‌ Memory. In fact, the deepest and most abiding impression that can be made upon the Natural Memory is by impressing it with relations of In., Ex., or Con. ”

“ The first is the traditional method of learning by rote or endless repetition. A celebrated Coach in Anatomy says that no one can learn Anatomy until he has learned and forgotten it from three to seven times! In learning any book in this way, each sentence would be repeated over and over again, and then reviewed and relearnt and forgotten and learned again! And then at last the Pupil if he possesses a first-rate cramming memory might answer questions on it. ”

“ There are other legitimate ways to assist a poor memory to master these lines, but whatever is done let no one ever think of resorting to the unthoughtive, brainless process of endless repetition.
Poe’s “Bells,” being a difficult selection to learn, furnishes, as all difficult selections do, numerous opportunities for applying Analysis to fix the lines in memory. Hence it should be mastered and often recited by all who would learn to memorise poetry or prose, in, at the very least, one-fifth of the time required by the old mind-wandering process of rote learning. ”

“ We learn words by rote, but not their meaning; that must be paid for with our life-blood, and printed in the subtle fibres of our nerves. ”

“ A minor object is to memorise the Series—but a greater and higher object never lost sight of in these Lessons is to train the Memory and Attention. And let the pupil clearly notice how this training comes about. Merely running over a Series—two words at a time—without discriminating the kind and quality of the relations between the words—hoping that the mind unpractised in the Laws of Assimilation will intuitively feel those relations, constitutes no training of the Memory. Such reading neither strengthens the old power nor develops any new power. ”

“ The fourth method is the pupil’s final method.
‌The foregoing exhaustive methods of dealing with a book are recommended to those only whose natural memories are not yet made powerfully retentive by the System as a Memory-TRAINER. If, however, a Pupil possesses a good natural memory and a mastery of the System as a Device for memorising, and he has also greatly added to the power of his Concentration as well as his memory by doing all the exercises, he will not use my System, even in the reading of the first book, except now and then—certainly not constantly, but only occasionally. ”

“ And that by memorising and repeating for a considerable period Analytic Series, and especially by making and memorising one’s own Correlations, it is an unequalled system of Memory-TRAINING. Let the ambitious Pupil learn as many examples as I give in the lessons in order to so strengthen his natural memory that he will no longer have to use the device for memorising, his natural memory permanently retaining all he desires to remember. This result comes only to those who carry out all the directions with genuine alacrity—not shirking one of them.
Do all persons find them easy? ”

“ As we have said, this great subconscious region of the mind—this Memory region—may be thought of as a great record file, with an intricate system of indexes, and office boys whose business it is to file away the records; to index them; and to find them when needed. The records record only what we have impressed upon them by the attention, the degree of depth and clearness depending entirely upon the degree of attention which we bestowed upon the original impression. We can never expect to have the office boys of the memory bring up anything that they have not been given to file away. ”

“ Torture of the Drill By practice we come to unconsciously discover and employ new associative methods in our recording of facts, making them easier to recall, but we can certainly add nothing to the actual scope and power of retention.
Yet many books on memory-training have wide circulation whose authors, showing no conception of the processes involved, seek to develop the general ability to remember by incessant practice in memorizing particular facts, just as one would develop a muscle by exercise. ”

“ On the contrary, the recording, by memory, of facts and images unique in their kind takes place at every moment of duration. But inasmuch as learnt memories are more useful, they are more remarked. And as the acquisition of these memories by a repetition of the same effort resembles the well-known process of habit, we prefer to set this kind of memory in the foreground, to erect it into the model memory, and to see in spontaneous recollection only the same phenomenon in a nascent state, the beginning of a lesson learnt by heart. ”

“ Almost twenty years ago Lee had heard them when he had taken a course on Greek philosophy at the old Chicago University. He had hardly ever thought of them again. What strange tricks a fellow's memory could play....
But then: it couldn't be memory.... Never before had Lee's memory expressed itself in such a weird, such a theatrical manner: like a metallic robot-actor rehearsing his lines ... like a little child which has just learned a sentence and in the pride of achievement varies the intonation in every possible way. ”

“ There are millions of minute dots, depressions, pockmarks on your brain which certainly record what you remember, what you have enjoyed or disliked, or done or said. The surface of the brain anyhow is large enough to furnish writing-paper for the record of all these things, of all your memories. If the impression of an experience has not been acute, the dot is not sharply impressed, and the record fades: in other words, you come to forget it. But if it has been vividly impressed, the record is never obliterated. ”

“ Past images, reproduced exactly as they were, with all their details and even with their affective colouring, are the images of idle fancy or of dream: to act is just to induce this memory to shrink, or rather to become thinned and sharpened, so that it presents nothing thicker than the edge of a blade to actual experience, into which it will thus be able to penetrate. In truth, it is because psychology has failed to separate out the motor element in memory, that we have sometimes overlooked and sometimes exaggerated what is automatic in the evocation of remembrances. ”

“ When learning prose or poetry by means of endless repetitions to acquire, and endless views to retain, the mind soon wanders, and thus discontinuity is promoted; but, in reciting a Correlation forwards and backwards from memory, the mind cannot wander, and thus the continuity is greatly strengthened. Again, memory is improved by exercise, and improved in the highest degree by making and memorising correlations, because in making them the reviving power of the memory is exercised in conformity to Memory’s own laws ”

“ Practice in Memorizing Inadequate It is evident that if what we have been describing as the process of recall is true, then the commonly accepted idea that practice in memorizing makes memorizing easier is false, and that there is no truth in the popular figure of speech that likens the memory to a muscle that grows stronger with use. ”

“ A second reason for the prominence of memorizing is found in the desire to strengthen the memory through its exercise. We know that the arm may be developed by the lifting of weights, so that it will be stronger for lifting anything that comes in its way. So it has long been a common belief that memory, as a faculty of the mind, could be developed by any kind of exercise so as to be stronger for all kinds of recall. ”

“ IMPRESSION Of all the mental operations employed by the student, memory is probably the one in which the greatest inefficiency is manifested. Though we often fail to realize it, much of our life is taken up with memorizing. Every time we make use of past experience, we rely upon this function of the mind, but in no occupation is it quite so practically important as in study. We shall begin our investigation of memory by dividing it into four phases or stages—Impression, Retention, Recall and Recognition. ”

“ There is more in these various phenomena than absolutely mechanical actions, but less than an appeal to voluntary memory. They testify to a tendency of verbal auditory impressions to prolong themselves in movements of articulation; a tendency which assuredly does not escape, as a rule, the control of the will, perhaps even implies a rudimentary discrimination, and expresses itself, in the normal state, by an internal repetition of the striking features of the words that are heard. Now our motor diagram is nothing else. ”

“ Reasons why a thorough study of recognition is necessary. that they have misunderstood the true nature of memory. Instead of dissociating the two elements, memory-image and movement, in order to discover subsequently by what series of operations they come, having each abandoned some part of its original purity to fuse one with the other, they are apt to consider only the mixed phenomenon which results from their coalescence. This phenomenon, being mixed, presents on the one side the aspect of a motor habit, and on the other that of an image more or less consciously localized. ”

“ It is a Device or Method of memorising or learning any facts whatever—prose, poetry, dates, data, formulæ and facts and principles of the sciences, &c., &c., &c., or anything whatsoever to be remembered. (2) There is another equally, if not more important aspect of it, namely, as a Trainer or Strengthener of the Natural Memory to any extent the pupil wishes to carry it. And the Natural Memory is so strengthened by the use of the System, that as a Device, the System is no longer required. ”

“ We seem distinctly able to trace the action of the recording process in this elementary form of Memory, in the help given in the "learning by heart" of a task, by repeating it the last thing at night; for every school-boy, who has to commit to memory fifty lines of Virgil, knows very well that, if he can "say them to himself," even slowly and bunglingly, just before going to sleep, he will be able to recite them much more fluently in the morning. ”

“ You will find that either your eye memory is better than your ear memory, or vice versa. The remedy lies in exercising the weaker faculty, so as to bring it up to the standard of the stronger. The chapters of eye and ear training will help you along these lines. The same rule applies to the several phases of memory—develop the weak ones, and the strong ones will take care of themselves. The only way to develop a sense or faculty is to intelligently train, exercise and use it. Use, exercise and practice will work miracles in this direction. ”

“ The memory of sounds and words forms the basis of our speech—"the memory of words is only the memory of certain articulations"—and those parts of the brain which regulate articulation are also the memory-centers for speech or the result of articulation. Thus, when the speech-center is disorganized, not merely the power of articulation disappears, but also the memory of words. ”

“ And investigation reveals, always, that there has been used the identical process of committing these sacred books to memory, and recalling them at will—the natural method, instead of an artificial one. And therefore we shall devote this chapter solely to this method whereby poems or prose may be committed to memory and recalled readily.
This natural method of memorizing words, sentences, or verses is no royal road. It is a system which must be mastered by steady work and faithful review. One must start at the beginning and work his way up. ”

“ In fact, we commonly act our recognition before we think it. Our daily life is spent among objects whose very presence invites us to play a part: in this the familiarity of their aspect consists. Motor tendencies would, then, be enough by themselves to give us the feeling of recognition. But we hasten to add that in most cases there is something else besides.
For, while motor apparatus are built up under the influence of perceptions that are analysedAnd these movements prepare this choice among memory-images, when memory-images intervene. ”

“ In actual performance much must be left to finger memory, but one must actually have the notes in his mind as well as in his fingers. Before a concert I go over all my program mentally, and find this an excellent method of practise when traveling from one city to another. To those who study with me I say, you must try various methods of memorizing; there is no universal way; each must find out by experiment which is most suited to his individual case. ”

“ In cultivating the memory, the training should be first for the attention, then for the imagination and the power of suggestive thought; and from the opening of these faculties a true memory will grow. The mechanical power of repeating after once hearing so many words is a thing in itself to be dreaded. ”

“ If our premises are sustained, then we can recognize in man no will, no ego, no possibility for spontaneous action, for every action must be a response to the stimuli of contact or distance ceptors, or to their recall through associative memory. Memory is awakened by symbols which represent any of the objects or forces associated with the act recalled. Spoken and written words, pictures, sounds, may stimulate the brain patterns formed by previous stimulation of the distance ceptors; while touch, pain, temperature, pressure, may recall previous contact-ceptor stimuli. ”

“ Since this simple illustration may be made infinitely complex by means of the millions of fibers which connect every center in the cortex with every other center, and since, in passing from one experience to another in the round of our daily activities, these various areas are all involved in an endless chain of activities so intimately related that each one can finally lead to all the others, we have here the machinery both of retention and of recall—the mechanism by which our past may be made to serve the present through being reproduced in the form of memory images or ideas. ”