28 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
Despite our modern and perfectly sound view of education, as something 
far broader than instruction, nevertheless it is obvious that instruction 
will always form a considerable part of education. Now, suppose we have 
a body of truth in which the pupil is to be instructed. If he possessed 
theoretically perfect retentive powers, each truth, being clearly presented 
and clearly perceived once, would become a permanent mental possession. 
This would evidently be mental economy. If, on the other hand, the 
pupil possesses a slovenly memory, so that each truth must be presented 
and perceived twenty times and forgotten nineteen, thus evidently nine- 
seen-twentieths of the work is wasted. 
Here I suppose I shall be met with objections. No human being, it 
may be said, is expected to have a perfect memory ; furthermore, our 
school-children and college students are not abnormally deficient in mem- 
ory, and it is not the function of our schools at all to stuff the memory 
with a lot of facts. I am well aware that any one in these days who raises 
his voice for memory training puts himself in an unpopular position. We 
are living now right in the heat of the reaction against the old memory 
education—a reaction begun by Locke, Rousseau, and Pestalozzi—and 
with more feeling than reason we hate everything pertaining to the ante- 
reformation system. As is usual in reformations, we have swung too far 
in some things, and particularly in our contempt for memory culture. 
Modern theories of education tend to develop acutely the perceptive, 
discriminative, and volitional powers of the mind, to the neglect of the 
retentive. In our object lesson, pedagogy teaches to see accurately, to 
discriminate fully, to execute carefully. It is well designed to turn out 
good scientists, good critics, good inventors, good mechanics. These 
ends meet the demands of the day, and we are satisfied. We are more 
interested in the undiscovered than in the past, hence we prefer to culti- 
rate perception rather than retention. In my opinion, this ideal of the 
educated man leaves something to be desired ; but my point now is that 
our neglect of memory training is likely to lead to serious and unfor- 
;unate mental waste in acquisition. 
Incidentally, also, the conditions of modern life are unfavorable to 
memory. Before the mind of the student passes an infinite variety of 
new perceptions. There is too much to see, to hear, to read, to allow us 
to dwell carefully enough upon one thing to remember it. 
[t is ‘useless to say, quoting some eminent psychologists, that the 
memory is incapable of being much strengthened by training. In the 
long run, those mental powers which have the greatest emphasis put upon 
them in our schools will be developed, while those which are neglected 
will suffer. There is a certain time in the early life of the child when 
the memory can be greatly, perhaps almost indefinitely, strengthened by 
training, but it cannot be done by any incidental hit-and-miss training; 
it can be done by training that is definite and systematic, directed solely