ON ACQUIRED PSYCHICAL HABITS. 311 



"cramming," as distinguished from "learning;" the analogy being 

 obvious to the overloading the stomach with a mass of food too great 

 to be digested and assimilated within a given time, so that a large 

 part of it passes out of the body without having been applied to any 

 good purpose in it. A part of this difference obviously consists in 

 the formation of Mental Associations between the newly-acquired 

 knowledge and that previously possessed ; so that the new ideas be- 

 come linked on with the old by " suggesting " chains. Such is espe- 

 cially the case, when we are applying ourselves to the study of any 

 branch of knowledge, with the view of permanently mastering it ; 

 and here the element of Time is found practically to be very impor- 

 tant. Thus, it is recorded of the late Lord St. Leonard's that, hav- 

 ing (as Sir Edward Sugden) been asked by Sir T. F. Buxton what 

 was the secret of his success, his answer was: "I resolved, when 

 beginning to read Law, to make every thing I acquired perfectly my 

 own, and never to go to a second thing till I had entirely accomplished 

 the first. Many of my competitors read as much in a day as I read 

 in a week ; but, at the end of twelve months, my knowledge was as 

 fresh as on the day it was acquired, while theirs had glided away 

 from their recollection." (Memoirs of Sir T. F. Buxton, chap, xxiv.) 

 In this Assimilating process, it is obvious that the new knowledge 

 is (as it were) turned over and over in the Mind, and viewed in all its 

 aspects ; so that, by its coming to be not merely an addition to the 

 old, but to interpenetrate it, the old can scrarcely be brought into the 

 " sphere of consciousness," without bringing the new with it. But, 

 from the considerations already adduced, it seems almost beyond 

 doubt that the formation of this Associative nexus expresses itself in 

 the Physical structure of the Brain, so as to create a mechanism 

 whereby it is perpetuated so long as the Nutrition of the organ is 

 normally maintained. 



Another class of phenomena, now to be considered, seems to afford 

 even more direct and cogent evidence of the dependence of Memory, 

 in its simplest exercise, upon a registering process, that consists in 

 some Nutritive modification of the Brain-tissue. In what we call 

 "learning by heart" which should be rather called learning by 

 Sense, instead of by Mind we try to imprint on our Memory a cer- 

 tain sequence of words, numbers, musical notes, or the like ; the re- 

 production of these being mainly dependent upon the association of 

 each item with that which follows it, so that the utterance of the 

 former, or the picture of it in " the mind's eye," suggests the next. 

 We see this plainly enough when children are set to learn a piece of 

 poetry of which their minds do not take in the meaning ; for the rhythm 

 here affords a great help to the suggestive action; and nothing is 

 more common than to hear words or clauses (transferred, perhaps, from 

 some other part of the poem) substituted for the right ones, which are 

 not only inappropriate but absolutely absurd in the lines as uttered. 



