which only tries the school training. The



Memory 63

habit of learning verses parrot fashion is so
deeply-rooted in school children that 4t has
become no test of voluntary memory at all,
but the following test, while not exhaustive,
has been found to show the native quality
of voluntary memory. It has the merit of
being unexpected enough so that the child
brings no pernicious habits of automatism
to obscure the examiner's judgment.

The teacher has seven or eight cards, on
each of which is pasted the picture of a
familiar animal, a cow, a pig, an elephant,
a rabbit, a horse, a camel, a bear, a cat.
Silhouettes may be used if the outline is made
unmistakable. These cards she arranges
in any order on the table, and tells the child
to look at them until he knows them. She
then mixes them up, and asks the child to
put them back in the same order as before.
If he cannot manage eight correctly, try
seven, or six, or four, until he shows his
average capacity. When he has put the
cards down in the order he thinks to be right,
the teacher asks him if he is sure he has the



64 The BacKward Child

order straight. If he is sure, it is an indica-
tion that he has tried to form associations
about the placing of the animals, whether
successfully or not, but if he is imcertain,
it is apt to be because he depended on his
automatic memory. Conscious thought al-
ways carries with it an element of positive-
ness, whereas the mechanical mental process
usually cannot withstand a challenge.

If a child does very poorly in this test of
voluntary memory, he must not be con-
demned, for, as we have said, he may be
simply overworking another faculty. The
examiner will notice, without hurrying him,
whether he takes a long or a short time to
learn the row of animals, and having learned
them, how successful he is in getting the
order right. She will notice whether he only
attempts a few and gets them right, or
whether he tries for the whole eight and puts
them down inaccurately. And finally she
will compare his showing in the two tests of
automatic and voluntary memory, to deter-
mine which is better developed. It some-



Memory 65

times happens that a child with a poor au-
tomatic memory has painfully goaded his
voluntary memory into some sort of action,
and in that case the training should begin
with the simpler and more fundamental
faculty. But in the majority of children
who show any memory defect, the voluntary
memory is stagnant, and the training here
suggested will be found effective in starting
the currents.

The first principle in the training of
voluntary memory is to make a habit of
forming associations. It is of no use to pour
in information, to create new associative
material unless the child can use to some
purpose the material he already has. And
so we will not set him to learning poetry
or prose, and we will not, for this purpose,
tell him stories about strange things and
places, to see how much he can remember.
But we will tell him to make some verses
of his own. It does not matter whether
they have any rhythm or not. Explain the
idea of rhyming, so as to make a goal for
5



66 TKe BacK^ward CKild

his invention, and let him dig out rhymes
about anything that comes into his head.
Cats and babies seem to be prolific subjects,
especially for girls. The verse need not be
of any stated length, but just as long as
the child sees fit. The utmost assistance
or direction that the teacher should give
is general conversation about the subject,
bearing in mind that the child*s ideas, and
not hers, are to be brought into play.

A girl of twelve, in a special class, and
recommended for an ungraded class, wrote
this rhyme in this way :

My Kitty gave me a search
I threw her a ball to catch
My Kitty is fond of ball
She likes to walk in the hall
My Kitty likes to sit down
She runs all over the town
My Kitty playes with the mice
My kitty is nice
She went out in the night
My Kitty can fight.

It took a good while, perhaps three
quarters of an hour, to work it out by herself.



Memory 67

but her ideas, however slowly they came,
seemed to pour out endlessly. The idea of
*' kitty** suggested *' scratch** right away,
because she had apparently just had an
encounter with a cat. Then came a long
pause at the double difficulty of a new idea,
and one that would rhyme. In Juha's
production each line is a complete idea, and
has no real relation to any other, but in her
mind some sort of relation did exist as this
series of pictures, which we call ideas, passed
laboriously into expression. Julia was
thought to be hopeless in memory work, but
here she had been working out associations,
however inconsequential to any one else,
which to her meant a coherent train. The
day after she had written it, she learned it by
heart in a short time. The mental effect
was like the increased strength and more
precise activity of a muscle. The search for
associated ideas in making up the rhymes
was as much an exercise, a contracting and
relaxing if you will, of unused faculties as a
fifteen-minute practice with dumbells to the



68 THe BacK-ward CHild

biceps. And having dug out these associa-
tions herself, when she came to memorise
the lines, she found herself involuntarily
memorising by the associations already
established, rather than by the automatic
process she would apply to some one's else
ideas in a set piece.

Educators are confronted with a long
curriculum and a short school period, and
it is not surprising that under such condi-
tions children's minds become enervated.
Too much is given them and too little is
asked of them. It is obviously much quicker
to instil facts and trust to their being ab-
sorbed than to wait upon the slow unfolding
of originality. We should appreciate, how-
ever, that the mind which would react must
first be able to act. And presently it comes
about that from writing his own verses,
however meagre, a child comes to have some
sort of a dim fellow-craftsman feeling for
the other people who make verses. Espe-
cially this feeling is fostered if the verses he
sees are about things written within his



Memory 69

range; if for instance he learns somebody's
else rhyme about a kitty, he gets a notion,
confused and inarticulate as may be, that
there is another way of treating the subject
than his. And having some active ideas
about a kitty from his own efforts, he reads
the new rhyme with reference to his own
ideas, which are already awakened, and
when he learns it, he tends to memorise, as
we say, intelligently.

This is an account, briefly, of the effect
of the training from within. To carry on the
training, have the child make and learn his
own rhymes on every conceivable subject;
for instance, winter, summer, things to eat,
music, the country, etc. ; and as far as possible
let him learn at the same time some existing
piece on the same subject so that he will get
into the habit of taking in the ideas he reads.
The elaborateness of the verses given him
must keep pace w4th the elaboration of his
own ideas ; if he is set to learning pieces with
ideas beyond him, he will quickly slip back
into the rote habit. All sound training is a



70 THe BacK^ward CKild

matter of starting habits of mind, and the
principle in the present case is siifficiently
clear. For the method, verse is suggested
as a beginning, because of the obvious amuse-
ment of rhyme. It does not do, of course, to
offer only the dry bones of training. But
later, if memorising prose is for any reason
more desirable, the same purpose is served.
III. It will be noticed that in the discus-
sion of automatic and voluntary memory, ac-
quiring has been the point and nothing has
been said about retaining. The reason is
that for purposes of analysis, retention is
practically a separate faculty. It appears
after examining a great many children that
a good automatic or a good voluntary
memory or both may exist independently of
the retentive quality. A child may be able
to repeat automatically a sentence he has
heard or he may be able to give a complete
account of Columbus's voyage which he has
studied in his history book, but only while
it is fresh. After a short time his recollection
in either case becomes inaccurate or frag-



Memory 71

mentary. On the other hand, a child who
makes a very poor showing at the immediate
reproduction of ideas will be found to have
embedded in his memory the few bits which
did make an impression either in conscious
or unconscious thought. And so it seems
that retention is a faculty to be observed
separately from the other factors in memory.
Retention furthermore is thought to be
more largely physical than either automatic
or voluntary reproduction. The evidence
of a more complete physical basis lies in the
results of training. An under-nourished
child, for instance, responds to a stimulation
of his automatic or voluntary memory and
shows an improvement quite surprising in
view of his physical condition; but it is very
rarely that he shows at the same time any
marked improvement in retention. Let him
be built up physically, however, and the
duration of his memory will seem quite out
of proportion to his progress in other ways.
This simple case of under-nourishment is the
most direct evidence of the physical basis



72 THe BacK-ward CKild

of retention which is apt to come in the
teacher's way. For the rest, the quaHty of
brain substance, which only partly deter-
mines automatic memory, is at the root of
retentive memory. "Like wax to receive,
like marble to retain, " we say, and the figure
hits close to the mark. For we have to
imagine this brain substance to be different
from any material we know, having at the
same time plasticity and solidity, the quali-
ties of wax and marble in one.

In establishing facts about the mind the
observations made in brain disease confirm
the slighter evidence drawn from normal
working. At least, if we observe a certain
faculty in health and in disease and see that
certain factors are constant, whatever the
other changes, we can be fairly certain of the
inferences. In diseases of memory, it ap-
pears that it is chiefly the retentive faculty
which is lost. The person can begin all over
again, save in cases of senility, and use his
automatic or voluntary memory quite un-
impaired. But a whole lifetime may have



Memory 73

dropped out of his recollection, and perhaps
he will have trouble in retaining even his new
knowledge. In cases of senility or of simple
old age, the marblelike quality of the brain
substance seems to go, along with its plasti-
city, leaving it in a condition which can
figuratively be called brittle. And the effect
is that old people are neither very impres-
sionable, nor are their impressions lasting.
Only the old ideas, rooted and embedded in
associations, survive.

And so we separate retention from the
other factors of memory because its own
excellence does not appear to depend on the
excellence of these other factors, and because
we judge retention to be largely a physical
quality. And we infer its physical basis from
the immediate effect of improved nourishment
(whether by more food or by better assimi-
lation of the existing diet) and from its uni-
form absence in diseases of memory. Neither
nourishment nor disease, on the other hand,
affects so directly the workings of the other two
kinds of memory, automatic and volimtary.



74 THe BacK\varcl CHild

This quality of retention is discussed to
give a more complete account of memory
in its various phases. In experience however,
the quality of retention is rarely found to
need special training, or indeed to be
especially responsive to it. That is to say,
if a child who knows his history or geo-
graphy lesson to-day has forgotten it to-
morrow, the fault is probably that his
voluntary memory is poor or untrained and
that he is overworking his automatic memory.
If his retentive faculty as such were at fault,
he would not have been able to learn the
lesson in the first place. Forgetfulness must
not be confused with poor retention. Reten-
tion depends on the degree of impressibility
of the brain-cells and forgetfulness depends
on the strength or weakness of the impres-
sion. A simple matter of forgetfulness in
school children, therefore, is to be helped
by making the impressions stronger, that
is, by awakening and multiplying associa-
tions. So that training in automatic
and voluntary memory is the most



Memory 75

direct way of remedying the ordinary for-
getfulness.

But when the impressibihty of the brain
cells apart from the strength or weakness
of the impressions is defective, the person is
either an imbecile of high grade, in which case
defective retention is only one of a number of
symptoms ; or he suffers from disease of memo-
ry ; or his physical condition is far below par.
Any one of these cases is not for the teacher
to handle. If it comes under her observation
she can refer it to one of the proper agencies,
but it is useless to try and deal with
defective retention in the schoolroom alone.

With this analysis of memory the teacher
is in a better position to distinguish specific-
ally between the different types of attention
and memory.

Attention works as Memory works as

1. Simultaneous, or all at l. Automatic, or reproducing

one time. successive disconnected

impressions over an in-
definite time.

2. Homogeneous, or all on 2. Voluntary, or reproducing

on© thing. a complexity of ideas

over an indefinite time.



76 The BacKward Child

3. Disparate, or on two 3. Retentive, or holding ideas
things at one time. over an indefinite time.

The time element differentiates simulta-
neous attention from automatic memory;
on the one hand is the reproduction of an
impression which is received at one time like
the sight of a picture; and on the other the
reproduction of successive impressions, like
a column of figures. In common they have
the absence of conscious thought.

Homogeneous attention and voluntary
memory are even less likely to be confused.
In common they both demand conscious
thought at the outset, homogeneous attention
in sharply focusing the object to be attended
to, like the search for a particular kind of
tree in a number of pictures, and voluntary
memory in calling up associations to make
a setting for a new idea. But beyond the
element of consciousness they are widely
different in function. Voluntary memory is
concerned with the manipulation of associa-
tions, while homogeneous attention in pursuit
of a single object in the focus of consciousness



Memory 77

is as divorced from association processes as
one mental faculty can be independent of
another.

Retentive memory is of all three types
the most dependent upon the quality of
attention, as shown in its simultaneous,
homogeneous, and disparate workings. But
it is not to be confused with any one of them,
because its essential function is a call upon
past ideas, whereas storing up is no part of
the functions of attention.



CHAPTER VI

THE MENTAL ROLE OF SENSATION

A PERSON'S sensations play upon his
'^^ thoughts as the overtones of a musical
sound play upon the pure notes. He is
perhaps scarcely conscious of their unending
procession, except when they bring him a
pain or a decided pleastire. And yet these
sensations of colour, of sound, of touch, of
taste, which in the beginning opened the
whole external world to the child, later
persist as a background of warmth and
vitality to all his intellectual life.

The mental r61e of the senses offers an
inquiry quite distinct, and far more sub-
tle than an investigation into the physical
excellence of the sense organs. When one
realises that many deaf people are musically
very keen, and that many blind people
78



The Mental Role of Sensation 79

continue to think vividly in terms of colour,
it is plain that mental sensitivity is a quality
by itself and not wholly dependent on retina,
tympanum, and nerve tracts. The range
of mental sensitivity, furthermore, is much
wider than the range of physical sensitive-
ness ; in ten people, for instance, whose vision
and hearing would prove by test to be
approximately the same, one would find the
greatest possible difference of vividness in
the rdles played by colour and sound. And
so, in making the sensation tests in an
examination of this present kind, one should
know in advance from a specialist's report
whether the child suffers from defective
sense organs, near-sightedness, deafness, and
so on. If he does, the defect may handicap
him in his school work, but it does not
necessarily neutralise the value of the sensa-
tion tests ; if he is normal, on the other hand,
it does not mean that he is also normally
sensitive to all the impressions that come
through his physical sense organs. In other
words, the sensation tests which will pre-



8o The BacKward Child

sently be described are to determine, first,
the keenness of coloiir sense, sound discrimi-
nation, touch, taste, and smell discrimi-
nation; and second, especially in the case
of colour and sound, to determine the respec-
tive importance of the mental roles played
by these sensations. These tests are in-
tended for children over eight years old, for
before that age, before sensations have be-
come much interwoven with other mental
processes, the examination would be hardly
more than a physical one.

Comparatively few children are colour-
blind; but nevertheless one finds a great
many who are hazy in distinguishing between
certain shades of blue and green, for in-
stance, and who make one decision at one
moment and another at the next. A bunch
of coloured worsteds can be used, with ten
or fifteen different reds, shading gradually
into yellow at one end and purple at the
other, and so on through all the colours.
There should be many tones of all colours,
so that when the child is told to sort all the



TKe Mental Role of Sensation 8l

yellows or all the blues, he will have to use
a nice discrimination in deciding where one
colour leaves off and another begins.

This test, commonly used for trying the
colour sense of railway engineers, besides
revealing any possible colour-blindness, goes
farther and gives an indication of how sensi-
tive a person is to colour, and by corollary
how important a part colour is apt to play in
his impressions, his memory, and so on. A
certain shade of blue strikes the retina with an
invariable number of light vibrations, and
another shade of blue strikes it with a dif-
ferent number, always in fixed ratio to the
first. But whether this mathematical dif-
ference is actually perceived in the mind
is the whole question of mental sensitivity.
Some children, for instance, whose accepted
idea of blue is a kind of ultramarine, will
pick out the two or three shades in the
neighbourhood of ultramarine, and refuse
all the others. Such a child is not colour-
blind, nor indeed can one say that his sense
of colour is actually defective, but it is not



82 The BacKward Child

likely that he notices colours very much, or
that one can enliven his intellectual processes
very much by means of colour suggestions.
On the other hand, a nice discrimination in
colour indicates a vividness of colour impres-
sions, a certain appeal and a possible storing
up of colour images which is a valuable point
of departure in training.

It must be remembered that to most
children, especially in the public schools,
** light green" and "dark green," or ''light
blue" and ''dark blue," are as much two
separate colours as pink and red. So that
when the examiner asks the child to pick out
all the shades of a certain colour, she should
say "all the light reds and all the dark
reds," or whatever the colour may be.

Most people show an uneven development
in their sound and colour senses, and the
practical point of the test is to compare the
two. And so, having discovered how dis-
tinctly the child . realises his colour images,
we will determine his sound sensitivity by
equally simple means. When it is possible



The Mental R6le of Sensation 83

to have a piano for sound tests, it is better
to use it; otherwise any instrument with a
range of several notes, or as a last resort,
the voice, will serve as a rough device. But
supposing a piano to be convenient, the
examiner strikes one note, for instance
middle C, and after an interval, another
next to it, asking the child whether the first
note is higher or lower than the second or
the same. Practically all children over nine
years old know the scale, and know when it
goes up and when it goes down, but if the
child in question should be doubtful for any
reason, the test can be made by asking
whether the second note is the same or
different from the first. Then strike several
notes together, either in a chord or a dis-
cord, and ask the child how many different
sounds he can pick out. Meanwhile the
child is to look away from the piano, so that
what he sees will not influence his sound
discrimination.

If these tests seem to call for a less nice
discrimination than the colour test, it must



84 The DacKward CKild

be remembered that our sound sensitivity
is relatively a recent development in the
race; street boys of to-day whistle with a
correctness of ear which was the peculiar
gift of a few musicians two hundred years
ago; but although there is no common unit
to measure colour and sound sensitivity,
the latter in the average person is still gross
in comparison with the fine discrimination
of the eye. And therefore, to be fair, we
must make our sound tests more rough and
ready than our colour tests.

It is scarcely possible to put down in exact
terms the result of either of these foregoing
tests. In a general way one must notice
whether the child tends to be dull or inaccu-
rate. In sorting the colours if he admits
only two or three shades of the colour re-
quired, his sense is dull, but if he spreads
over into neighbouring colours, grouping
with blue several shades that are strictly
green, or purple, his discrimination is ill-
balanced. In the same way, if he hears two
simultaneous notes on the piano as one, he



TKe Mental Role of Sensation 85

is dull of hearing, but if he hears them as
four, he is ill-balanced. It is worth while
noticing whether dulness in the one sense
corresponds to dulness or inaccuracy in the
other, or, indeed, whether dulness or in-
accuracy in the one case is compensated by
keenness in the other. Children over ten
frequently meet all the requirements of
these tests with perfect ease, and they are to
be accoimted, not as prodigies, but as likely
to respond favourably to training devices
based on sensation.

More difficult and much more indefinite,
however, is the discovery of which sense
plays the more important mental r61e, and
how important that role is. Or, as we
commonly say, is the child visual-minded or
ear-minded? The answer to this question
has its most direct bearing on the subject
of spelling. When we know whether sights
or sounds make the readier and clearer im-
pression on the child's mind, we shall know
whether to teach him spelling phonetically
or by visualising, and we shall not waste



86 THe Backward Child

time on approaches to which he is insensible.
But besides this immediate schoolroom
application, the question of visual- or ear-
mindedness has its effect on the reporting
of impressions, the accrediting of testimony,
the formation of personal tastes, and so on
into a thousand ramifications. The ex-
aminer is concerned to find out whether
visual- or ear-mindedness predominates ; how
pronounced is that predominance; and
whether it corresponds to the greater keen-
ness in discrimination of colour or sound
which may have been exhibited.

Unfortunately the child is not prepared
to index his impressions; and the examiner
therefore can only go about her present
business in the most roundabout way.
Cotdd one be sure of a lively response, the
ideal way to determine ear- or visual-minded-
ness would be to have a child tell a story, and
notice whether sights or sounds prevailed
in his recollection. But this would pre-
suppose an almost literary sense of the value
of impressions, whereas the average child



THe Mental Role of Sensation 87

is chained to a recital of the baldest facts.
And so, while it is sometimes worth trying,
story-telling is so often unsatisfactory that
other ways are suggested, always on the
principle of getting at a mental fact so in-
directly that the person questioned does not