dent through forced self-reliance, the robust in physical health and the incapacitated by past sicknesses and injuries, the welltaught and the ill-taught, the child of virtue and the one whose whole life is a moral struggle, the child of encouragement and ambition and the one heart-sick and of little expectancy. Is this an exceptional school? If not, what are the individual rights of these children? How can any system of uniformity answer the responsibility which it assumes?" Burbank, the botanical wizard, considers differentiation as absolutely necessary and unavoidable. He says: "Right here let me lay special stress upon the absurdity, not to call it by a harsher term, of running children through the same mill in a lot, with absolutely no real reference to their individuality. No two children are alike. You cannot expect them to develop alike. They are different in temperament, in tastes, in disposition, in capabilities, and yet we take them in this precious early age, when they ought to be living a life of preparation near to the heart of nature, and we stuff them, cram them, and overwork them until their poor little brains are crowded up to and beyond the danger line. The work of breaking down the nervous systems of the children of the United States is now well under way. . . It is imperative that we consider individuality in children in their training precisely as we do in cultivating plants. Some children, for example, are absolutely unfit by nature and temperament for carrying on certain studies. Take certain young girls, for example, bright in many ways, but unfitted by nature and bent, at this early age at least, for the study of arithmetic. Very earlybefore the age of ten, in fact-they are packed into a room along with from thirty to fifty others and compelled to study a branch which, at best, they should not undertake until they have reached maturer years. Can any one by any possible cultivation and selection and crossing compel figs to grow on thistles or apples on a banana tree?" President Eliot says: "Uniformity in intellectual training 1 "The Training of the Human Plant," Century, 72: 127–138. is never to be regarded as an advantage, but as an evil from which we cannot completely escape. . . . . . All should admit that it would be an ineffable loss to mankind if the few great men were averaged with the millions of common people—if by the averaging process the world had lost such men as Faraday and Agassiz, Hamilton and Webster, Gladstone and Cavour. But do we equally well understand that when ten bright, promising children are averaged with ninety slow, inert, ordinary children, a very serious loss is inflicted, not only upon those ten, but upon the community in which the one hundred children are to grow up? There is a serious and probably an irreparable loss caused by the averaging of the ten with the ninety children. Therefore I say that uniformity in education all along the line is an evil which we should always be endeavoring to counteract, by picking out the brighter and better children, and helping them on by every means in our power." CHAPTER XIII THE NATURE OF MEMORY PROCESSES MEMORY is one of the most important powers of the human mind, viewed either from the stand-point of the development of civilization or from the stand-point of the technique of education. Without it all education and all advancement would be impossible. It is only through the proper conservation of experiences, individual and collective, that progress is made possible. The more faithfully the experiences of the animal are recorded, the higher his place in the scale of development. There is no educational process into which memory does not enter as a factor of prime importance. Hence the significance of the study of the nature of memory and its training in a discussion of educational psychology. Almost everybody assumes to know what memory is. Even the unlettered do not hesitate to advance a doctrine concerning its improvement. Volumes have been written, and many practical suggestions have been given, for the improvement of the memory, but it is only within very recent years that scientific doctrines concerning the nature of memory and its wise use have been evolved. Since all sound methods of its improvement must rest on the right conception of its nature, it is easy to understand that many of the older methods of training have been entirely overthrown. The old methods have been found to be not only incorrect, but some of them positively harmful. We shall see that all training of the memory must be carried on according to scientific principles. The old saws and sayings concerning memory-training are no more valid than the proverbs recording popular opinion of the weather, the treatment of disease, or many other popular dicta which really represent superstitious credulity rather than scientific observation. We shall see that a sound theory of memory and its training will furnish many underlying principles of method in all education. Therefore, because of the vital connection between memorytraining and all other intellectual, affective, and volitional training, it is of the highest importance that teachers have a thorough understanding of the subject. A Preliminary Point of View.-In ordinary parlance, when memory is spoken of, the term implies the series of mental operations whereby facts are registered and retained in the mind, and at some future time reproduced. In this loose way of considering the matter, the various functions in the series are conceived of as being carried on independent of all physical or physiological relations, and the mind is supposed in some mysterious way to "store up" the impressions until needed, when they are again in an equally mysterious way "brought forth." The main difference between the older, popular conception and the newer scientific views is in the present recognition of the physical and physiological links in the series of phenomena. Memory, instead of being a "storehouse," consists of dynamic relations established through experience. There is now a quite definite "natural science" of memory. There is, to be sure, an unexplainable something beyond the sequence of observable phenomena. But that is not peculiar to psychology. The same is equally true of physics or chemistry. Natural science, in any realm, merely explains the series of changes that occur; the final what, why, and how are not attempted in the scientific discussion. Those questions belong to metaphysics rather than to science. The psychologist is as near to an explanation of the simultaneous or sequential occurrences of a brain state and a corresponding mental state as the physicist is to telling why negative electricity attracts positive, or why a body falls to the earth; or as the chemist is to explaining the cause of chemical affinity. They can each merely trace the serial changes. The psychologist, regarding his subject as a branch of natural science, should proceed in exactly the same way. To go beyond is to invade the realm of the metaphysician and to forsake purely psychological methods. Neural Modifications. Whenever a stimulus acts upon a sense-organ it sets up some change, either mechanical or chemical, in that organ, which in turn causes a wave of impulse to be carried along the sensory nerve toward the brain. There a change takes place in the physical arrangement of the neural tissue. Just what this change is in every case, no one is able to say, but that there is rearrangement can be proved. In Laura Bridgman's brain, for example, the areas controlling functions which were exercised were normally developed, while the other portions were less well developed. We know that exercise of the brain causes a change in size. This is demonstrated through such experiments as those of Venn in measuring the heads of Cambridge students. Long generations of exercise of particular kinds have also produced the varying peculiarities of brain structure in different animals, e. g., large areas for smell in the dog, large frontal areas in man, etc. Again, lack of exercise causes atrophy. This is demonstrated in the case of defectives like Laura Bridgman and others. These changes in neural tissue are made possible through the property of plasticity. There is also a tendency toward permanence of structure after changes have been wrought in the tissues. Growth means plasticity, and also tendency toward fixity. Organic Memories.-Biologically, memory is not a property of neural tissue alone. There is ample evidence to support the belief that all living animal tissues possess memory. We may go a step further and assert that the basal factors of memory -registration, conservation, and reproduction of impressions gained through stimulation—are common to all organic tissues. All those modifications produced and conserved in living matter, plant or animal, are termed organic memories. Thus, muscular, osseous, cartilaginous, and vegetable tissues all possess organic memories of previous experiences. Organic memories include race memories as well as individual memories. The basis of heredity and instinct is organic memory. Huxley has written, |