Speaker 1: How to remember facts. In speaking of this phase of memory,
we use the word fact in the sense of an
ascertained item of knowledge, rather than in the sense of
a happening, et cetera. In this sense, the memory of
facts is the ability to store away and recollect items
of knowledge bearing upon some particular thing under consideration. If
we are considering the subject of horse, the facts that
we wish to remember are the various items of information
and knowledge regarding the horse that we have acquired during
our experience, facts that we have seen, heard, or read
regarding the animal in question, and to that which concerns it.
We are continually acquiring items of information regarding all kinds
of subjects, and yet when we wish to collect them,
we often and find the task rather difficult, even though
the original impressions were quite clear. The difficulty is largely
due to the fact that the various facts are associated
in our minds only by contiguity in time or place,
or both, the associations of relation being lacking. In other words,
we have not properly classified and indexed our bits of information,
and do not know where to begin to search for them.
It is like the confusion of the businessman who kept
all his papers in a barrel without index or order.
He knew that they were all there, but he had
hard work to find any one of them when it
was required. Or we are like the compositor whose type
has become pied and then thrown into a big box.
When he attempts to set up a book page, he
will find it very difficult, if not impossible, whereas if
each letter were in its proper box, he would set
up the page in a short time. This matter of
association by relation is one of the most important things
in the whole subject of thought, and the degree of
correct and efficient thinking depends materially upon it. It does
not suffice us to merely know a thing. We must
know where to find it when we want it. As
old Judge Sharswood of Pennsylvania once said, it is not
so much to know the law as to know where
to find it. Kay says over the associations formed by
contiguity in time or space, we have but little control.
They are in a manner accidental, depending upon the order
in which the objects present themselves to the mind. On
the other hand, association by similarity is largely put in
our own power, for we in a measure, select those
objects that are to be associated and bring them together
in the mind. We must be careful, however, only to
associate together such things as we wish to be associated
together and to recall each other. And the associations we
form should be based on fundamental and essential and not
upon mere, superficial or casual resemblances. When things are associated
by their accidental and not by their essential qualities, by
their superficial and not by their fundamental relations, they will
not be available when wanted and will be of little
real use. When we associate what is new with what
most nearly resembles it in the mind, already we give
it its proper place in our fabric of thoughts by
means of association. By similarity. We tie up our ideas,
as it were, in separate bundles. And it is of
the utmost importance that all the ideas that most nearly
resemble each other be in one bundle. The best way
to acquire correct associations, and many of them. For a
separate fact that you wish to store away so that
it may be recollected when needed. Some useful bit of
information or interesting bit of knowledge that may come in
handy later on is to analyze it and its relations.
This may be done by asking yourself questions about it,
each thing that you associate it with in your answers
being just one additional cross index, whereby you may find
it readily when you want it. As Kay says, the
principle of asking questions and obtaining an answers to them
may be said to characterize all intellectual effort. This is
the method by which Socrates and Plato drew out the
knowledge of their pupils, filling in the gaps and attaching
new facts to those already known. When you wish to
so consider a fact, ask yourself the following questions about it.
One where did it come from or originate? Two? What
caused it? Three? What history or record has it? Four?
What are its attributes, qualities, and characteristics? Five? What things
can I most readily associate with it? What is it like? Six?
What is it good for? How may it be used?
What can I do with it? Seven? What does it prove?
What can be deduced from it? Eight? What are its
natural results? What happens because of it? Nine? What is
its future? And its natural or probable end or finish? Ten?
What do I think of it on the whole. What
are my general impressions regarding it? Eleven? What do I
know about it in the way of general information? Twelve?
What have I heard about it? And from whom? And when?
If you will take the trouble to put any fact
through the above rigid examination, you will not only attach
it to hundreds of convenient and familiar other facts, so
that you will remember it readily upon occasion, but you
will also create a new subject of general information in
your mind, of which this particular fact will be the
central thought. Similar systems of analysis have been published and
sold by various tea teatures at high prices, and many
men have considered that the results justified the expenditure. So
do not pass it by lightly. The more other facts
that you manage to associate with any one fact, the
more pegs will you have to hang your facts upon.
The more loose ends will you have whereby to pull
that fact into the field of consciousness. The more cross
indexes will you have whereby you may run down the
fact when you need it. The more associations you attached
to a fact, the more meaning does that fact have
for you, and the more interest will be created regarding
it in your mind. Moreover, by so doing, you make
very probable the automatic or involuntary recollection of that fact
when you are thinking of some of its associated subjects.
That is, it will come into your mind naturally in
connection with something else in a that reminds me fashion,
and the oftener that you are involuntarily reminded of it,
the clearer and deeper does its impression become in the
records of your memory. The oftener you use a fact,
the easier does it become to recall it when needed.
The favorite pen of a man is always at his
hand in a remembered position, while the less used eraser
or similar thing has to be searched for, often without success.
And the more associations that you bestow upon a fact,
the oftener it is likely to be used. Another point
to be remembered is that the future association of a
fact depends very much upon your system of filing away facts.
If you will think of this when endeavoring to store
away a fact for future reference, you will be very
apt to find the best mental pigeonhole for it. File
it away with the thing it most resembles, or to
which it has the most familiar relationship. The child does
this involuntarily. It is nature's own way. For instance, the
child sees a zebra, it files away that animal as
a donkey with stripes, a giraffe as a long necked horse,
a camel as a horse with long crooked legs, long neck,
and humps on its back. The child always attaches its
new knowledge or fact onto some familiar fact or bit
of knowledge. Sometimes the result is startling, but the child
remembers by means of it. Nevertheless, the grown up children
will do well to build similar connecting links of memory,
attach the new things to some old familiar thing. It
is easy when you once have the knack of it.
The table of questions, given a little farther back, will
bring to mind many connecting links. Use them. If you
need any proof of the importance of association by relation,
and of the laws governing its action, you have but
to recall the ordinary train of thought or train of
images in the mind of which we become conscious when
we are daydreaming or indulging in reverie, or even in
general thought regarding any subject. You will see that every
mental image or idea or recollection is associated with and
connected to the preceding thought and the one following it.
It is a chain that is endless until something breaks
into the subject from out side. A fact flashes into
your mind, apparently from space, and without any reference to
anything else. In such cases you will find that it
occurs either because you would previously set your subconscious mentality
at work upon some problem or bit of recollection, and
the flash was the belated and delayed result, or else
that the fact came into your mind because of its
association with some other fact, which in turn came from
a precedent one. And so on. You hear a distant
railroad whistle, and you think of a train, then of
a journey, then of some distant place, then of someone
in that place, Then of some event in the life
of that person, Then of a similar event in the
life of another person, Then of that other person, Then
of his or her brother, then of that brother's last
business venture, then of that business, then of some other
business resembling it, Then of some people in that other business,
Then of their dealings with a man you know, then
of the fact that another man of a similar name
to the last man owes you some money, then of
your determination to get that money. Then you make a
memorandum to place the claim in the hands of a
lawyer to see whether it cannot be collected. Now, although
the man was execution proof last year from distant locomotive
whistle to the possible collection of the account, and yet
the links forgotten. The man will say that he just
happened to think of the debtor, or that it somehow
flashed right into my mind, et cetera. But it was
nothing but the law of association. That's all. Moreover, you
will now find that whenever you hear mentioned the term
association of mental ideas, et cetera, you will remember the
above illustration, or part of it. We have forged a
new link in the chain of association for you, and
years from now it will appear in your thoughts.