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of a system of thought. It is enriched, and it enriches by every proper association thus established.

There are schemes of association that are devised to trick the memory into grouping things that are not naturally related. They are called memory systems. They employ some form of mnemonics to take the place of a natural law. From all these keep yourself free. If they have merit, it is due to their use of natural laws, which had better be used instead. If they are opposed to these laws, they are in the end pernicious. Nothing can be devised that is quite so useful as the laws God has set in the soul. Let us discover these laws and follow them.

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS.

For testing one's grasp of the subject, and

for discussion in Teacher-Training Classes.

Consider the value of directness and of simple Ianguage in teaching.

What things in your experience as a pupil in the Sunday-school do you recall most vividly? What suggestion does this offer to you?

If fatigue has something to do with memory results, has it also something to do with teaching? What will the amount of sleep you secure Saturday night have to do with your usefulness as a teacher the next day?

How do you secure repetition without at the same time resorting to the cramming process in teaching? Just what is the legitimate use of memory?

Study your own mind processes to verify the statement that the mind naturally tends to recall former facts of knowledge. Is this recall a pleasurable activity?

How do you enrich a fact of knowledge?

Outline the laws of association, and write a paragraph based upon your own experience illustrating each law. Write out at length the laws of teaching that a study of the laws of association suggests.

What laws of association, not named here, are suggested to you by a study of your own processes of recall?

VII

THE BUILDING OF IDEALS

MEMORY is the soul's storehouse. In it is

treasured all our past. From it we draw from time to time the elements of knowledge we need for present use, in determining both what to do with the new perceptions that are constantly forming in the soul, and also what to choose for guidance in conduct. Thus all that we have known is of use in interpreting new knowledge and in directing us to additional knowledge.

Knowledge

I

A new object is presented to my senses. am not aware of having perceived it before. I am surprised. "What is it?" I ask. Memory and New At once all my remembered knowledge that in any way resembles it rushes to my aid. The soul is resolved to subdue it, if it can. It can, if it is not entirely new. But if it is entirely new I cannot answer the inquiry. The boy that for the first time tasted a new kind of candy,-called in the trade a sourball,-found it at last sweet, then transparent, then hard, and finally thought he had identified it. He said: "It is sweet ice." This was the best he could do with it.

I recall a series of events. There is a break in the series. Some additional element is needed to complete it. Through this power of recall I am made familiar with my present mental stock; I am also made aware of my lack. Knowing what I need I am able to institute inquiries that will secure it. Thus my knowledge becomes increasingly complete.

Exact Recall

Memory recall is exact recall. The thing comes again just as it was. We recognize it not only as a thing of the past, but the exact reproduction of the past. Is there any other method of recall? Do we possess the power to separate past knowledge and recall only chosen parts of it, and combine them into an object of thought, each part of which is a past experience, but which, as a whole, is not at all like anything in our past knowledge? We have such a power. It is at once the most fertile and the most dangerous power we possess. We call it Imagination, by which term we designate the power of the soul to work up its past experiences into new forms of thought. It seems as if the soul wearies of exact recall, and decides to follow its own caprice, its own order of procedure. I have known boys, accompanying their father for a walk, obey the restraints of good form until

Imagination
Defined

the native woods were reached, when with a shout and a leap all objective guidance was thrown to the winds, and the boys ran and leaped and shouted and reveled in the glorious freedom of unrestrained activity. So it seems to me that at times the soul breaks away from the routine of memory recall, and virtually proclaims its purpose to set in consciousness what it most enjoys, regardless of the relation this may have or not have to any real experience of the past.

Thus the soul builds only chosen elements, rejecting all that are broken or unlovely or unworthy, into an ideal which it cherishes vastly more than any real because it is the best combination it can make from the best elements it can choose out of its whole treasury of knowledge. The function of this power of the soul is to create our ideals. God wants us to enjoy not alone the finest scenes that fall within our ken, he wants us to enjoy the finest things our souls can entertain. Hence he has given us this power of recreation by which we may make for ourselves a world after our own wish, peopled as we prefer, and abounding in such life and incident as we can invest with the fullest measure of feeling, and is consequently to us most delightful. We know these products to be distinct from memory products after we have created them

Function of
Imagination

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