In the School-Room Part 3

A distinction is to be made between memory as a power of the mind and the remembrance of particular facts. One or two examples will ill.u.s.trate this difference. The late Dr. Addison Alexander, of the Theological Seminary at Princeton, had memory as an intellectual power to a degree almost marvellous. The following instance may be cited. On one occasion, a large cla.s.s of forty or fifty were to be matriculated in the Seminary in the presence of the Faculty. The ceremony of matriculation was very simple. The professors and the new students being all a.s.sembled, in a large hall, each student in turn presented himself before the professors, had his credentials examined by them, and if the same proved satisfactory, entered his name in full and his residence, in the register. When the matriculation was complete and the students had retired, there was some bantering among the professors as to which of them should take the register home and prepare from it an alphabetical roll,--a work always considered rather tedious and irksome. After a little hesitation, Dr. Alexander said, "There is no need of taking the register home; I will make the roll for you;" and, taking a sheet of paper, at once, from memory, without referring to the register, and merely from having heard the names as they were recorded, he proceeded to make out the roll, giving the names in full and giving them in their alphabetical order. This was a prodigious feat of pure memory; for in order to make the alphabetical arrangement in his mind, before committing it to paper, he must have had the entire ma.s.s of names present in his mind by a single act of the will. Some of the wonderful games of chess performed by Paul Morphy are dependent in part upon a similar power of memory, by which the player is enabled to keep present in his mind, without seeing the board, a long series of complicated evolutions, past as well as prospective and possible. The same is true of every great military strategist.

In all these cases, there is an act of pure memory, a direct and positive power of summoning into the mind its past experiences, such as can only take place where, either by natural gift or by special training, the memory as a faculty of the mind is in a high state of vigor. But there are other cases, in which a man is enabled to recall a great number of particular facts by a species of artifice or trick, which does not imply any special mental power, and the study of which does not tend, in any marked degree, to develop such power. More than thirty years ago, the late Professor Dod, of Princeton College, in lecturing to a cla.s.s on the subject of light, was explaining the solar spectrum, and after exhibiting the solar ray, divided into its seven primary colors, violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red, said, "If you will form a mnemonic word of the first letters of each of these words, you will be able, without further effort, to remember the order of the prismatic colors the rest of your lives," and he accordingly wrote upon the board and p.r.o.nounced the uncouth and almost unp.r.o.nounceable word, _Vibgyor_, which probably not one of us has ever forgotten. An ingenious Frenchman some years ago traversed the country and collected large audiences by his exhibitions of skill in this species of artifice, and by undertaking to initiate his hearers in the method of remembering prodigious numbers of historical facts by means of such artificial contrivances. Mnemotechny, the name which he gave to his invention, is merely a trick of the memory. It is a means of remembering a particular set of facts or things by the aid of contrivances purely artificial and arbitrary. Its possession does not imply, and its cultivation does not produce, real mnemonic power. It undoubtedly has its uses. But it is rather wealth gained by a lottery ticket than a wealth-producing power acquired by wise habits of business.

In teaching the young, it is well not to neglect either of these principles. We should give our children from time to time ingenious and interesting contrivances for remembering important facts. These contrivances, if judicious in plan and execution, will be great helps to them. We may in this way bridge over the difficulty of remembering many of the important facts and dates in history.

I would not discourage these artificial methods. Though they are mere tricks, they are valuable. But they have by no means the same value as those methods of teaching which cultivate and produce true mnemonic power. This power, like every other mental power, is given in unequal measure to different individuals. Like every other mental power, also, it grows mainly by exercise. No power of the mind is more capable of development. I have mentioned some things which tend to the growth of this power, such as presenting knowledge to children in logical and orderly arrangement, and frequent re-examination of knowledge already obtained. Perhaps there is no quickener and invigorator of the memory equal to that of reciting to a judicious teacher before a large cla.s.s of fellow-students. By a proper and skilful use of the art of questioning, under the excitement of answering before a large cla.s.s, the mnemonic power is subjected to a healthy and invigorating test, and all such exercises promote powerfully the mental growth. A child may absorb knowledge by mere solitary reading and study, just as a sponge absorbs water, but the knowledge so acquired readily evaporates, or is squeezed out. Something is needed to fix in the mind the knowledge that has been lodged there, and no process is more effectual to this end than that of cla.s.s recitation. It is by telling other people what we have learned, that we learn it more effectually, and make it more completely our own.

A good teacher, by good methods of recitation, can do more than all other persons and all other things to secure a sound and healthy growth of memory in the young.

Another thing highly necessary in cultivating a really good memory, is attaining the utmost possible clearness in our ideas. If the knowledge, when it first comes into the mind, is clearly and sharply defined, so that we really know a thing, instead of having vague and confused notions about it, we shall be the more likely to remember it permanently. Nothing is more conducive towards giving these sharp and definite impressions than the use of visible ill.u.s.trations. Actual exhibition before a cla.s.s of the objects talked about, actual experiments of the operations described, and the constant use of the chalk and the blackboard, presenting even abstract truths in concrete and visible symbols, as is done in algebra, chemistry, and logic, are among the means by which, chiefly, knowledge becomes well defined to the mind. Such is the const.i.tution of the mind, that we have a clearer apprehension of what we see than of what comes to us through any other sense, and the knowledge which comes to us by means of the sight, is, of all kinds of knowledge, the most lasting and the most easily recalled.

Hence, in teaching, it is hardly possible to exaggerate the importance of visible ill.u.s.tration.

Another condition extremely favorable to the growth of memory, is the existence of a considerable degree of mental excitement at the time that knowledge enters the mind. Metals weld easily only at a white heat. If we would obtain a vigorous grasp of knowledge, and incorporate it thoroughly into our other mental products, so that it shall become really ours, there should be the glow of mental heat at the time of our acquiring such knowledge. Ideas that come into the mind when we are in an apathetic state, make no permanent lodgment. Hence the importance of exciting a lively interest in that which is the subject of study. If the teacher has failed to excite this interest, and finds in his cla.s.s no animation, no sympathy, no eagerness of attention, he may be sure that he is not accomplishing much. The child must, if possible, acquire a fondness for that which is to be remembered. Love, in fact, is the parent of memory.

VIII.

KNOWLEDGE BEFORE MEMORY.

I have had frequent occasion to urge upon teachers the importance of cultivating the memory of their pupils. The old-fashioned plan of requiring the young to commit to memory precious truths, in those very words in which wise and far-thinking men have handed them down to us, has too much gone out of use. I have felt called upon, therefore, from time to time, to recall to the minds of teachers the unspeakable importance of early exercising the memory of children, and of storing their memories with wise sayings and rules. I would not take back anything I have said on this subject, but rather repeat and reiterate it. At the same time, I am aware that there is an extreme in this direction, and I therefore put in a word of caution.

The danger to which I refer is that of requiring children to commit mere words, to which they attach no meaning, or without their having any real knowledge of the things expressed by the words. Of course there is much in the formulas and rules of science that the immature minds of children cannot entirely comprehend, and I am far from saying that a child should commit nothing except what it can comprehend. But whatever in a rule or a doctrine they can understand, should be diligently explained to them, and the ingenuity of teachers should be exercised in awakening the minds of their scholars to the apprehension of real knowledge as a preliminary to the act of committing it to memory.

An example or two will ill.u.s.trate my meaning. Children at school are required to commit to memory the tables of weights and measures. The exercise is one of acknowledged and indispensable importance. But it is possible for a child to repeat one of these tables with entire glibness and accuracy, pretty much as he would whistle Yankee Doodle, without any apprehension of the actual things which the terms of the table represent. He may learn to say "sixty seconds make a minute, sixty minutes make a degree, three hundred and sixty degrees make a circle,"

with no more idea of the things expressed by this formula of words, than the parrot who has been taught to say, "You are a big fool." If the teacher will show the child an actual circle, with the degrees, minutes, and seconds marked, and will let him count them for himself, so that he has a real knowledge of the things, he will then not only commit this formula of words to memory more easily, but the knowledge itself will promote his mental growth. He will be feeding on real knowledge, not on its husks. So in learning about inches, feet, yards, rods, and miles, let the teacher, with foot-rule and yard-stick, show what these measures really are, let him by some familiar instance give the child an idea of what a mile is, and then let the memory be invoked to store up the knowledge gained. So with ounces, pounds, and hundred-weights. So with gills, quarts, and gallons. The common weights and measures are as necessary in the school-room as are spelling-books and arithmetics. The actual weights and measures, so far as possible, should be exhibited, should be seen and handled, and the child's mind made to grasp the very things which the terms express, that is, he should first get real knowledge, and then he should store his memory with it in exact words and forms of expression.

This is the true mental order. Knowledge first, then memory. Get knowledge, then keep it. Any other plan is like attempting to become rich by inflating your bags with wind, instead of filling them with gold, or attempting to grow fat by bolting food in a form which you cannot digest.

Some teachers, in their fear of cramming children with words, spend their whole time and energy in awakening thought, and none in fixing upon the memory the thoughts which have been awakened. They are so much afraid of making children parrots, that they discard rules entirely in teaching, or require pupils to frame rules for themselves. This is to go into the opposite extreme. The rules and formulas of science require the greatest care and consideration, and a large and varied knowledge. Few even of men of learning and of those specially skilled in the meaning of words and the use of language, are qualified to frame scientific rules and propositions. To suppose that young children, just beginning to feel their way into any department of science, are competent to such a task, is simply absurd. Yet this is by no means uncommon. A teacher will conduct a boy intelligently and skilfully through the process of doing a sum in arithmetic, or a.n.a.lyzing a sentence in grammar, and then say to him, "Now, form a rule for yourself, stating how such things should be done." The first step here is right. Take your pupil by the hand, and conduct him through the process or thing to be done. This is necessary to enable him to understand the rule. But when he thus gets the idea, then give him the rule or principle, as it is laid down in the book, in exact and well considered words, and let him commit those words thoroughly to memory, without the change or the omission of a word or a letter.

What is thus true as to the method of teaching the common branches of knowledge, is equally true in the study of religious knowledge. I would not set a child to framing a creed or a catechism, nor, on the other hand, would I require him to commit such formulas to memory, without making some attempt to awaken in his mind previously an apprehension of the ideas which the creed or formula contains. I do not say that a child's mind is competent to grasp all the truths embraced in these symbols. But there is no portion of any religious creed or catechism that I have ever seen, some of the terms of which are not capable of being apprehended by children. A wise teacher, in undertaking to indoctrinate a child in such a formula, will begin by showing him as far as possible what the words mean, by exciting in him ideas on the subject, by filling his mind with actual knowledge of the truths contained in the formula. Then, when the words of the formula have become to the child's mind instinct with meaning and life, the teacher will pause to stamp them in upon the memory. That is the way to study a catechism. First, give the child, so far as possible, the meaning, then grind the words into him. Do not set him to making a catechism; do not let him stop at understanding the meaning, without committing the words.

Two phrases will cover the whole ground. Knowledge before memory. Memory as well as knowledge.

IX.

THE POWER OF WORDS.

Words govern the world. Let any one who doubts it, canva.s.s the motives by which his own action is decided. Considerations are presented to his mind, showing him that a certain course of conduct is right, or good, or expedient, or pleasant, and he adopts it. The considerations presented to his mind decide his action. But those considerations are in the form of arguments, and those arguments exist in words. The true original power, indeed, is in the thought. It is the thinker who generates the steam. But thought unexpressed accomplishes nothing. The writer and the speaker engineer it into action.

Thought, indeed, even in the mind of its originator, exists in words.

For we really think only in words. Much more, then, must the thought have some verbal expression, written or spoken, before it can influence the opinions or the actions of others. A man may have all the wisdom of Solomon, yet will he exercise no influence upon human affairs unless he gives his wisdom utterance. Profound thinkers sometimes, indeed, utter very little. But they must utter something. They originate and give forth a few thoughts or discoveries, which minds of a different order, writers and talkers, pick up, reproduce, multiply, and disseminate all over the surface of society. When a man unites these two functions, being both an original thinker and a skilful and industrious writer, the influence which he may exert upon his race is prodigious. If any one, for instance, would take the pains to trace the influences which have sprung from such a man as Plato, he would have an ill.u.s.tration of what is meant. Plato, while living, had no wealth, rank, or position of any kind, to add force to what he said or did. Whatever he has done in the world, he has done simply by his power as a thinker and a writer. There were many Grecians quite as subtle and acute in reasoning as he. But their thoughts died with them. Plato, on the other hand, was an indefatigable writer, as well as an acute and profound thinker. He gave utterance to his ideas in words which, even in a dead language, have to this day a living power. When Plato was dead, there remained his written words. They remain still. They have entered successively into the philosophies, the creeds, and the practical codes, of the Grecian world, the Roman, the Saracen, and the Christian. At this very hour hundreds of millions of human beings unconsciously hold opinions which the words of that wise old Greek have helped to mould. The mere brute force of a military conqueror may make arbitrary changes in the current of human affairs. But no permanent change is ever made except by the force of opinion. The words of Plato have done more to influence the destinies of men than have a hundred such men as Genghis Khan or Tamerlane. Four hundred millions of Chinese, in half the actions which go to make up their lives, are now governed by maxims and opinions which have come down to them from remote antiquity, from a man whose very existence is almost a myth. Those military heroes whose influence on society has been permanent have been propagandists as well as warriors. Opinions and codes have gone with, and survived, their conquering armies. The armies of the elder Napoleon were routed at Waterloo. But the Napoleonic ideas survived the shock, and they are at this day a part of the governing power of the world. It was the Koran--the words, and the creed of Mahomet--that gave to the Mahometan conquest its permanent hold upon the nations.

Spoken words have in themselves greater power than merely written ones.

There is a wonderful influence in the living voice to give force and emphasis to what is uttered. But the written word remains. What is lost in immediate effect, is more than gained in the permanent result. The successful writer has an audience for all time. He being dead still speaks. Men are speaking now, who have gone to their final account twenty centuries ago. Paul possibly may not have had the same influence with a popular a.s.sembly as the more eloquent Apollos. But Paul is speaking still through his ever-living Epistles. He is speaking daily to more than a hundred millions of human beings. He is exerting through his writings a power incomparably greater than that even which he exercised as a living speaker.

All men have not the commanding gifts of the apostle Paul. Yet after all, the main difference between ordinary men and men of the Pauline stamp, is not so much in their natural powers, as in the spirit and temper of the men, in that entire consecration to the service of Christ which Paul had, and which they have not. It is wonderful to see how much may be accomplished even by men of ordinary talents, when they have that zeal and single-mindedness which may be attained by one as well as by another. We are accountable for the talents which we have, not for what we have not. But let each man see to it that he uses to the utmost every talent which his Lord has committed to his trust.

How much, for instance, may be accomplished by a man who has a gift for addressing a popular a.s.sembly! Such a man by a few wise words, spoken at the right time and place, may do as much in five minutes, in pushing forward a general cause, as another man can do by the laborious drudgery of years. The words of the speaker touch the secret springs of action in a thousand b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He sends away a thousand men and women animated with a new impulse to duty, and that impulse is propagated and reproduced through hundreds of channels for long years to come.

Words are never entirely idle. They have at times a power like that of the electric bolt. They may sting like a serpent, and bite like an adder. In the ordinary intercourse of society, a man of good conversational powers may, even in discharging the customary civilities of life, put forth a large influence. The words dropped from minute to minute, throughout the day, in the millions of little transactions all the while going on between man and man, have an incalculable power in the general aggregate of the forces which keep society in motion.

As with spoken, so with written words. The man who knows how to weave them into combinations which shall gain the popular ear, and sink into the popular heart, has a mighty gift for good or evil. The self-denying and almost saintly Heber, by all his years of personal toil on the plains of India, did not accomplish a t.i.the of what has been accomplished for the cause of missions by his one Missionary Hymn. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that those few written words are worth more to the cause than the lives of scores of ordinary missionaries. How many anxious souls, just wavering between a right and a wrong decision, have been led to make the final choice, and to decide for Christ, by that beautiful hymn beginning "Just as I am, without one plea"? Who can doubt that the patient invalid of Torquay, in the hour that she penned those touching words, did more for the conversion of sinners than many a minister of the gospel has done in the course of a long and laborious life? What a fund of consolation for pious hearts through all time is laid up in the hymns of that other sweet singer, Mrs. Steele?

But as with spoken, so with written words, the great aggregate of their force is not contained in these few brilliant and striking exceptions, but in the millions of mere ordinary paragraphs which meet the eye from day to day, in the columns of the daily and weekly press, and which have apparently but an ephemeral existence. The dashing torrent and the mighty river are the more noticeable objects to the casual observer. But it is the minute myriad drops of the rain and the dew that cause the real wonders of vegetation. So these words which we read, and think we forget, hour by hour, all day long, are continually sinking into the soil of the heart, and influencing imperceptibly the growth of the germs of thought. The aggregate of all these minute, unnoticed influences is prodigious, incalculable.

Whoever can put words together wisely, either by the tongue or the pen, has a precious talent, which he may not innocently lay up in a napkin.

The gift, like that of wealth, is not his by right of ownership, but only as a steward. It is his as a means to do good for the honor of his Lord, and the welfare of his fellow-men. As I said in the beginning of these remarks, the world is governed by words. Let Christian men, by the industrious use of the gifts they have received, see to it that a greater proportion of this governing force in the world is contributed by the friends of Christ. Let them unceasingly fill up with the words of truth and righteousness every accessible channel of thought and opinion, and thus occupy till Christ come.

X.

THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE.

The study of language has ever been considered a study of high importance, regarded merely as a means of intellectual cultivation.

There are obvious reasons for this. The a.n.a.lysis of language is the a.n.a.lysis of thought. Resolving complex forms of speech into simple ones, and again combining simple expressions into those which are complex, and investigating, alternately by logic and aesthetics, the varying properties of words and phrases, are operations which come nearer, perhaps, than any other in which we are engaged, towards subjecting spirit itself to the crucible of experiment. The study of grammar, the comparison of languages, the translation of thought from one language to another, are so many studies in logic and the laws of mind. The subtleties of language arise from the very nature of that subtle and mysterious essence, the human mind, of which speech is the prime agent and medium of communication.

The cla.s.s of studies under consideration bears nearly the same relation to the spiritual that anatomy does to the bodily part of us. It is by the dissecting-knife of a keen and well-tempered logic, applied to the examination of the various forms which human thought a.s.sumes, that we most truly learn the very essence and properties of thought itself. It is this intimate, immediate, indissoluble connection and correlation between mind and language, between human thought and human speech, between the soul itself and the mould into which it is cast, that gives such importance to the general cla.s.s of studies known as philological.

The study of language, more than any other study, tends to make the mind acute, discriminating, and exact. It tends also, in a most especial manner, to fit a person to train the minds of others to acuteness, discrimination, and exactness. The person who has learned to express a thought with entire exactness and idiomatic propriety in two languages; or where, from the want of a.n.a.logy between the two languages, he finds this impracticable, to perceive the exact shade of difference between the two expressions; who can trace historically and logically the present meaning of a word from its original starting-point in reason and fact, and mark intelligently its gradual departures and their causes; who can perceive the exact difference between words and phrases nearly synonymous, and who can express that difference in terms clear and intelligible to others,--that person has already attained both a high degree of intellectual ac.u.men himself, and an important means of producing such ac.u.men in others.

The study of language is, in the profession of teaching, like the sharpening of tools in the business of the mechanic. Words are the teacher's tools. Human knowledge, even before it is expressed, and as it is laid up in the chambers of the mind, exists in words. We think in words. We teach in words. We are qualified to teach only so far as we have learned the use and power of words.

XI.

CULTIVATING THE VOICE.

If we except the lower kinds of handicraft, nine-tenths of all that is done in the world is done by means of the voice,--by talking. It is by talking we buy and sell; by talking, the lawyer, the doctor, the minister, the teacher perform the chief of their functions; by talking, the intercourse and machinery of life are chiefly kept in motion. As it was by a word that creation was accomplished, as the worlds came into being and were moulded into shape, not by the hand, but by the omnific voice of G.o.d, _saying_, "Let there be light and there was light," so in this lower sphere of human action, the tongue is mightier than the hand.

The moulding, propelling forces of society come from the use of words.

By words, more than by all other means, we persuade, convince, alarm, arouse, or soothe, or whatever else leads men to action and achievement; and while written words are full of power, yet even these are feeble as compared with spoken words, the living utterances of the human voice.

Not only so, but the manner of speaking, the tone and quality of the voice influence us quite as much as the words spoken.

Yet how strangely we neglect this wonderful instrument. The mechanic sees to it that his tools are as keen and strong as it is in the power of art and labor to make them. The sportsman spares no expense or care to have the articles that minister to his pleasure in the highest possible state of finish and perfection. How lavish we are in the purchase of instruments of music, and in keeping them properly tuned and cared for. Yet this most wonderful organ, the voice, which G.o.d has given to every one of us, and which is worth more to us than all the instruments of music, all the inventions of pleasure, all the tools of trade, that human skill has devised, is left for the most part in utter neglect, without intelligent guidance, its wonderful powers almost totally uncultivated and undeveloped. We all feel the sway that a well cultivated and modulated voice has upon us, its power to give us pleasure and win our a.s.sent, and yet the great majority of us neglect to cultivate in ourselves that which may give us such a power over others.

We are not oblivious of other advantages. We strive to make ourselves acceptable and to increase our influence, by attention to dress, by the adornment of our persons, and by the cultivation of our minds, by stores of knowledge and by accomplishments of various kinds, while the voice, which more than anything else is the direct instrument of the soul, is treated with neglect.