664 PSYCHOLOGY. 



refentiveness. This is a physiological quality, given once 

 for all with his organization, and which he can never hope 

 to change. It diiiers no doubt in disease and health ; and 

 it is a fact of observation that it is better in fresh and 

 vigorous hours than when we are fagged or ill. We may 

 say, then, that a man's native tenacity will fluctuate some- 

 what with his hygiene, and that whatever is good for his 

 tone of health will also be good for his meuKny. We may 

 even say that whatever amount of intellectual exercise is 

 bracing to the general tone and nutrition of the brain will 

 also be profitable to the general refentiveness. But more 

 than this we cannot say ; and this, it is obvious, is far less 

 than most people believe. 



It is, in fact, commonly thought that certain exercises, 

 systematically repeated, will strengthen, not only a man's 

 remembrance of the particular facts used in the exercises, 

 but his faculty for remembering facts at large. And a 

 plausible case is always made out by saying that practice 

 in learning words by heart makes it easier to learn new 

 words in the same way.* If this be true, then what 

 I have just said is false, and the whole doctrine of mem - 

 cry as due to * paths ' must be revised. But I am dis- 

 posed to think the alleged fact untrue. I have carefully 

 questioned several mature actors on the point, and all have 

 denied that the practice of learning parts has made any 

 such difference as is alleged. What it has done for them 

 is to improve their power of studying a part systematically. 

 Their mind is now full of precedents in the way of intona- 

 tion, emphasis, gesticulation ; the new words awaken dis- 

 tinct suggestions and decisions ; are caught up, in fact, into 

 a pre-existing net-work, like the merchant's prices, or the 

 athlete's store of 'records,' and are recollected easier, al- 

 though the mere native tenacity is not a whit improved, 

 and is usually, in fact, impaired by age. It is a case of better 

 remembering by better thinhing. Similarly when school- 

 boys improve by practice in ease of learning by heart, the 

 improvement will, I am sure, be always found to reside in 



* Cf. Ebbiaghaus: Ueber das Gediichtniss (1885), pp. 67, 45. One may 

 hear a person sav: "I liave a very poor memory, because 1 was never sys 

 teraatically m»>de to barn poetry at schooi.' 



