The Trained Memory | Page 8

men are ordered to be committed to memory every week. A verse of poetry is to be learned, also a verse from the Bible, daily. He is asked to remember the number of the page of any book where any interesting fact is recorded. These and other methods are slowly resuscitating a failing memory."
[Sidenote: Real Cause of Failing Memory]
As remarked by Professor James, "It is hard to believe that the memory of the poor old gentleman is a bit the better for all this torture except in respect to the particular facts thus wrought into it, the occurrences attended to and repeated on those days, the names of those politicians, those Bible verses, etc., etc."
The error in the book first quoted from lies in the fact that its author looks upon a failing memory as indicating a loss of retentiveness. The real cause is the loss of an intensity of interest. _It is the failure to form sufficiently large groups and complexes of related ideas, emotions and muscular movements associated with the particular fact to be remembered. There is no reason to believe that the retention of sensory experiences is not at all times perfectly mechanical and mechanically perfect._
Interest is a mental yearning. It is the offspring of desire and the mother of memory.
It goes out spontaneously to anything that can add to the sum of one's knowledge about the thing desired.
[Sidenote: The Manufactured Interest]
A manufactured interest is counterfeit. When a thing is done because it has to be done, desire dies and "duty" is born. In proportion as a subject is associated with "duty," it is divorced from interest.
[Sidenote: Memory Lure of a Desire]
If you want to impress anything on another man's mind so that he will remember it, harness it up with the lure of a desire.
Diffused interest is the cause of all unprofitable forgetfulness. Do not allow your attention to grope vaguely among a number of things. Whatever you do, make a business of doing it with your whole soul. Turn the spotlight of your mind upon it, and you will not forget it.
[Illustration: TESTING ABILITY TO OBSERVE, REMEMBER AND REPORT THINGS SEEN PRIVATE LABORATORY, SOCIETY OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY]

A SCIENTIFIC MEMORY SYSTEM FOR BUSINESS SUCCESS
[Illustration: Decorative Header]

CHAPTER VII
A SCIENTIFIC MEMORY SYSTEM FOR BUSINESS SUCCESS
[Sidenote: Importance of Associates]
We recall things by their associates. _When you set your mind to remember any particular fact, your conscious effort should be not vaguely to will that it shall be impressed and retained, but analytically and deliberately to connect it with one or more other facts already in your mind._
[Sidenote: "Cramming" and "Willing"]
The student who "crams" for an examination makes no permanent addition to his knowledge. There can be no recall without association, and "cramming" allows no time to form associations.
If you find it difficult to remember a fact or a name, do not waste your energies in "willing" it to return. Try to recall some other fact or name associated with the first in time or place or otherwise, and lo! when you least expect it, it will pop into your thoughts.
If your memory is good in most respects, but poor in a particular line, it is because you do not interest yourself in that line, and therefore have no material for association. Blind Tom's memory was a blank on most subjects, but he was a walking encyclopedia on music.
[Sidenote: Basic Principle of Thought-Reproduction]
_To improve your memory you must increase the number and variety of your mental associations._
Many ingenious methods, scientifically correct, have been devised to aid in the remembering of particular facts. These methods are based wholly on the principle that _that is most easily recalled which is associated in our minds with the most complex and elaborate groupings of related ideas_.
[Sidenote: Methods of Pick]
Thus, Pick, in "Memory and Its Doctors," among other devices, presents a well-known "figure-alphabet" as of aid in remembering numbers. Each figure of the Arabic notation is represented by one or more letters, and the number to be recalled is translated into such letters as can best be arranged into a catch word or phrase. To quote: "The most common figure-alphabet is this:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
t n m r l sh g f b s d j k v p o ch c g qu z
"To briefly show its use, suppose it is desired to fix 1,142 feet in a second as the velocity of sound, t, t, r, n, are the letters and order required. Fill up with vowels forming a phrase like 'tight run' and connect it by some such flight of the imagination as that if a man tried to keep up with the velocity of sound, he would have a 'tight run.'"
[Sidenote: Scientific Pedagogy]
The same principle is at the basis of all efficient pedagogy. The competent