Mental Discipline in Education, 403 



ones, but their assumed merit for discipline raises the ques- 

 tion hoiv they exercise it. Memory is the capability of re- 

 calling past mental impressions, and depends chiefly upon 

 the relations subsisting among these impressions in the 

 mind. If they are arbitrary, the power of recall depends 

 upon multiplicity of repetition, and involves a maximum 

 outlay of mental force in acquisition. If, however, ideas are 

 arranged in the mind in a natural order of connection and 

 dependence, this principle becomes the most important ele- 

 ment in commanding past acquisitions. The conditions 

 are then reversed; the outlay of effort in acquisition is 

 reduced, and the power of recall increased. Now the 

 memory cultivated in the common acquirement of language, 

 is of this lowest kind. The relation between words and 

 the ideas, or objects, of which they are the signs, is acci- 

 dental and arbitrary. Although philological science is be- 

 ginning dimly to trace out certain natural relations between 

 words and the things they signify, it will not be claimed 

 that this is made at all available in the ordinary study of 

 Latin and Greek ; indeed, the most thorough-going advo- 

 cates of these studies claim that their disciplinal value is 

 in the ratio of the naked retentive power which they call 

 into exercise. But the memory cannot be best disciplined 

 by a mental procedure which neglects its highest law. If 

 the power of recovering past states of consciousness de- 

 pends upon the natural and necessary connections among 

 ideas, then those studies are best suited for a rational dis- 

 cipline of this power which involve these natural rc'ations 

 among objects. On both grounds the sciences are prefer- 

 able to dead languages, as instruments of culture. For if 

 it be held desirable merely to task the memory by a dead 

 pull at arbitrary facts (and there are not wanting those 

 who hold to this notion of discipline), then it is only neces- 

 sary to use the innumerable facts of science, without re- 

 gard to order ; but when we take into account the immense 



