4. Master as You Go

Retentiveness of memory is somewhat dependent upon the particular channel through which the consciousness is reached. One man remembers best a name when he reads it, another when he hears it, another when he writes it down. With most persons, a combination of impressions is best. Listen to the newcomer's name and the sound of his voice, feel the quality of his hand-shake, notice his appearance, write his name down at the first opportunity.

Impress the mind through all possible channels. The result sought is a clear-cut, definite impression, far different from the blurred image with which lazy, superficial learning-by-rote provides the mind. Observe sharply, concentrate, grasp the idea in a single firm impression.

RULES OF ASSOCIATION

1. Analyze for Principles

After impression, comes association. To the efficient memorizer, the process here is strikingly like the keeping of a stores room. The incoming shipments are not dumped pellmell into the stores room-at least this method is barred among our leading business houses-but are arranged systematically. Classifications, often of an elaborate sort with appropriate symbols, are prepared, with bins labeled to correspond and a perpetual inventory for the stores clerk. This gets results. So it is in the mind, when it comes to dealing with mental materials.

There is nothing occult about this, no mysterious "faculty" of memory. The brain cells under the impulse of ideas simply arrange themselves in a new order, or, as it is commonly stated, form a path. "Retention," says William James, "is not a fact of the mental order at all. It is a purely physical phenomenon, a morphological feature, the presence of these

'paths' in the finest recesses of the brain's tissue." The more prominent paths are in general those over which the trains of thought more frequently move.

tory.

Principles are trunk lines running through mental terri

A principle does not become a principle until it is found to serve as a center around which details may be grouped, a sort of trunk line to which the details are feeders. Just as the chief stores clerk in deciding what to do with a package of screws or bolt of cloth works according to some general system of classification, so in arranging the mental material we proceed according to a certain rule.

2. Discover Relationships

The reader who at the time of commencing this book, let us say, owns a Ford, but later buys a car of a different make, is not thereby obliged to relearn the automobile. The two cars in many respects are similar, and he soon becomes familiar with the differences.

By noting similarities and differences the new idea is readily assimilated to the old.

In noting similarities and differences, one proceeds according to the principle of relationship. Such relationship may be illustrated very briefly as follows:

In remembering a series of freight bills, we think of them as expenses; in making several purchases at the corner grocery store, we think of them perhaps as parts of a picnic dinner.

3. Make Use of Associations

These associations may be obvious, as when Miss Smith is mentally tabbed "stenographer"; or far-fetched as was the connection between "umbrella" and "door-way" which a certain man accustomed to forgetting his umbrella, drilled into his mind with successful effect.

The so-called memory systems are usually nothing beyond more or less artificial methods of connecting things. In remembering numbers, Loisette, for instance, gives such illustrations as these: the height of Pike's Peak is 14,147 feet; observe that the number consists of two fourteens and a half of fourteen. Fusiyama, the noted volcano of Japan, is 12,365 feet high; observe that this number is made up of the number of months and days in the year-12 and 365.

Things are retained more easily and more tenaciously when bound together in a net-work.

"The 'secret of a good memory'," says William James, "is thus the secret of forming diverse and multiple associations with every fact we care to retain. But this forming of associations with a fact, what is it but thinking about the fact as much as possible? Briefly, then, of two men with the same outward experiences and the same amount of mere native capacity, the one who thinks over his experiences the most, and weaves them into systematic relations with each other, will be the one with the best memory. The merchant remembers prices, the politician other politician's speeches and votes; and both remember with a copiousness which amazes outsiders, but which the amount of thinking they bestow upon these subjects easily explains."

4. Bind Elements Into Large Units

These principles of memorizing were applied quite consistently by the late Edward H. Harriman, and they go far to explain his amazing memory. But Mr. Harriman's ability well illustrates the fourth principle, which we may state as the final rule of association.

"When you jump from one thing to another," Mr. Harriman was asked, "do you have to stop and think and adjust yourself to the new mental condition created by the consideration of a totally different subject?"

"No," he answered.

"You are not conscious of any change in the speed of the mental machinery, as it were? No break of any kind when you decide what to do in this case and immediately what to do in the next-jumping from a matter in New York City to some engineering problem in Utah or California?"

"No."

"How do you do it?" I asked.

"I don't know. I think," he went on meditatively, "that the mind is like these-what d'ye call 'em on this desk?— these pigeonholes. A man comes to me. I listen and decide on what to do; and then-it goes into a pigeonhole."

"And it's always there? No trouble in finding it again at any time?"

"It's always there." He was thinking, obviously looking for an explanation. "It's always there. Whenever I need it again I find it there."

"And you don't know how you do it?"

"I don't know how I do it," he repeated after me, almost hypnotically. Evidently he was trying to find out. But after a moment he shook his head and said: "But there are fewer pigeonholes, I think."

The secret, if one prefer to call it such, is revealed in the

words, "There are fewer pigeonholes." He bound elements into larger units.

To Mr. Harriman, an earth embankment was not an earth embankment but a straight track between two stations. This straight track between two stations was no isolated detail, but a part of the Union Pacific Railroad. And this in turn was but a link in that world-wide transportation system which was Mr. Harriman's goal. Spikes, rails, and ties he bound into construction units; construction units in turn he bound into railway units; and these finally he thought of as parts of a vast system—an orderly yet progressive sequence in thought.

RULES OF RECALL

1. Recall With Accuracy

Ideas impressed upon the brain and woven into its fiber, are retained; in other words, they stick. It is not, however, for that purpose that one remembers. His aim in memorizing ideas is to have them when he wants them. Retention is valuable only as it insures recall. The problem now becomes how to employ methods which will insure this.

The stock keeper of the mental stores, like any subordinate under lax discipline, is apt to fall into slothful habits. When called upon to produce a certain idea with which he has been intrusted, he perhaps returns a hazy, blurred copy of the original. Should this be accepted, he degenerates into still more negligent ways, until finally the requisitions drawn upon him are filled with whatever causes least exertion. Such easy-going and slovenly recall must be resolutely prohibited from the first; "rule thy servant or he shall rule thee."

2. Concentrate on the Relevant

Scarce has inaccuracy been avoided before another and yet more serious difficulty arises. The mental stores are re