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.