Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/323

Rh "cramming," as distinguished from "learning;" the analogy being obvious to the overloading the stomach with a mass of food too great to be digested and assimilated within a given time, so that a large part of it passes out of the body without having been applied to any good purpose in it. A part of this difference obviously consists in the formation of Mental Associations between the newly-acquired knowledge and that previously possessed; so that the new ideas become linked on with the old by "suggesting" chains. Such is especially the case, when we are applying ourselves to the study of any branch of knowledge, with the view of permanently mastering it; and here the element of Time is found practically to be very important. Thus, it is recorded of the late Lord St. Leonard's that, having (as Sir Edward Sugden) been asked by Sir T. F. Buxton what was the secret of his success, his answer was: "I resolved, when beginning to read Law, to make every thing I acquired perfectly my own, and never to go to a second thing till I had entirely accomplished the first. Many of my competitors read as much in a day as I read in a week; but, at the end of twelve months, my knowledge was as fresh as on the day it was acquired, while theirs had glided away from their recollection."—(Memoirs of Sir T. F. Buxton, chap, xxiv.)—In this Assimilating process, it is obvious that the new knowledge is (as it were) turned over and over in the Mind, and viewed in all its aspects; so that, by its coming to be not merely an addition to the old, but to interpenetrate it, the old can scrarcely be brought into the "sphere of consciousness," without bringing the new with it. But, from the considerations already adduced, it seems almost beyond doubt that the formation of this Associative nexus expresses itself in the Physical structure of the Brain, so as to create a mechanism whereby it is perpetuated so long as the Nutrition of the organ is normally maintained.

Another class of phenomena, now to be considered, seems to afford even more direct and cogent evidence of the dependence of Memory, in its simplest exercise, upon a registering process, that consists in some Nutritive modification of the Brain-tissue. In what we call "learning by heart"—which should be rather called learning by Sense, instead of by Mind—we try to imprint on our Memory a certain sequence of words, numbers, musical notes, or the like; the reproduction of these being mainly dependent upon the association of each item with that which follows it, so that the utterance of the former, or the picture of it in "the mind's eye," suggests the next. We see this plainly enough when children are set to learn a piece of poetry of which their minds do not take in the meaning; for the rhythm here affords a great help to the suggestive action; and nothing is more common than to hear words or clauses (transferred, perhaps, from some other part of the poem) substituted for the right ones, which are not only inappropriate but absolutely absurd in the lines as uttered.