XI
THE MEMORY AND THINKING

Many people freely admit that they have a poor memory. Their misstatements, breaches of etiquette, and failure to keep engagements they excuse by claiming a poor memory for dates, names, faces, facts, and the like. Accuse them of possessing poor judgment, and they are very much offended. They fail to see the close relation between a good memory and good judgment, between an accurate memory and sound common sense, which is but another name for good judgment in matters that all men have in common. Judgment affirms the agreement or disagreement between two objects of thought. It involves comparison. How can the comparison be accurate if the memory is not accurate in the ideas it recalls of the things to be compared?

At one time it was a mooted question whether the mind can think of more than one thing at a time. As a matter of doubt this question is no longer discussed. For, since all thinking involves comparison, if two objects are to be compared, they must be held before the mind at one and the same time. A good memory is, therefore, a very important aid to reflection.

And yet Thucydides and Lord Bolingbroke are said to have complained of a memory so retentive of details that it seriously interfered with their processes of thought. It is commonly believed that much memory work interferes with the growth and development of a pupil’s ability to think. “Much memorizing deadens the power of thought,” says W. T. Harris, who is recognized at home and abroad as one of the profoundest thinkers that America has produced. Innumerable anecdotes are told of great thinkers to show their forgetfulness in the commonest details of every-day life. These anecdotes are handed down from one generation of students to the next; their mirth-provoking character gives them vitality; they grow more ludicrous the oftener they are told; they do harm because they lead pupils to undervalue the importance of a good memory to those who are ambitious to shine as thinkers. Often, after it is too late, the student finds how he has crippled his whole intellectual life by neglect and abuse of the memory. A correct conception of the nature of memory and its function in every department of thought and research is of immense importance to those who teach, as well as to those who have gone far enough in their studies to give conscious direction to their own intellectual life. Most writers on education have treated, directly or indirectly, of the use and abuse of the memory; every examiner appeals to it more or less in the questions he puts; and every teacher shows the nature and extent of his skill in the kind of demands he makes upon the retentive power of his pupils. Take, for instance, the lesson in geometry. There are two ways of learning and giving the proof of a theorem: the language of the text-book may be committed to memory, and accepted in the class-room; or the pupil may fix in his mind the line of argument and give in his own language the successive steps of the demonstration. The former method is a sure sign of bad teaching and of defective habits of study. Whenever a skilful teacher finds his pupils giving the exact words of the text-book on geometry, he changes the lettering of the figure, and sometimes even the figure itself. He is not satisfied until he feels sure that the pupil is thinking the thoughts of the geometry and recalling the ideas by the inner nexus which binds them into a line of argument. He insists on it that the learner shall cultivate a memory for ideas rather than words.

Does it follow that the verbal memory is to be neglected and despised? This is the feeling of the learner who has tasted the joys of thinking; he hates the drudgery of learning by heart, because he has reached the age when logical memory begins to assert itself at the expense of the verbal memory. No less a psychologist than Professor James of Harvard has recently put in a plea for the verbal memory which, by reason of the abuses to which it was formerly subjected, has fallen into such disuse that pupils on reaching the high school are often unable to quote a single stanza of poetry. In his “Talks on Psychology to Teachers” he says,—

“The older pedagogic method of learning things by rote, and reciting them parrot-like in the school-room, rested on the truth that a thing merely read or heard, and never verbally reproduced, contracts the weakest possible adhesion to the mind. Verbal recitation or reproduction is thus a highly important kind of reactive behavior on our impressions; and it is to be feared, in the reaction against the old parrot recitations as the beginning and end of instruction, the extreme value of verbal recitation as an element of complete training may nowadays be too much forgotten.”[22]

Psychologists have shown that, in remembering and recollecting, the mind works according to certain laws of association. Of two words or ideas which have been before the mind at the same time, or in immediate sequence, the one naturally tends to suggest the other. If the attention is directed to the words as they follow each other in a line of poetry, the memory will recall these in the order in which they occur. If the mind’s eye is fixed on the ideas which the words express, the memory may carry these by reason of the logical connection which exists between them. Often the connection between the two things which are to be remembered is purely arbitrary. Then the link which binds them together must be forged by some mechanical process like frequent oral repetition, or by constant gazing at them upon the printed page, or by writing them out so that the impression made upon the mind through the eye and the ear is further strengthened through the muscular sense. The latter species of memory is usually called the mechanical memory, in distinction from the memory for ideas, which has been aptly styled the logical memory.

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.

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.

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.

“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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.