Memory: What It Is and How to Improve It (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Memory: What It Is and How to Improve ItThere is no topic in educational psychology more important than that of memory and its cultivation. Memory is indispensable in all intellectual processes, and therefore must be trained and developed. But it is liable to prove destructive to the other faculties (so called) and supplant them; hence it must be restrained within its proper limits, made auxiliary to the other faculties, and not allowed to assume the chief role. It is a matter of every-day comment that much memorizing deadens the power of thought - verbal or statistical memory being "mechanical." But it is also equally true that memory may paralyze the powers of senseperception, imagination, and will. With an overactive memory we suppose ourselves to see in an object what we remember to have seen in it before, and any new features escape our superficial perception. This is true, too, in the case of imagination, the power which ought to be productive as well as reproductive, and by which we ought to envisage not only real objects but possible ones, and thereby sharpen our powers of invention and discovery.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.