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Power Through Repose by Annie Payson Call
page 97 of 141 (68%)
constant help and suggestion, the pupils are brought to the natural
concentration. With regard to the memory, especial care should be
taken, for the harm done by a mechanical training of the memory can
hardly be computed. Repose and the consequent freedom of body and
mind lead to an opening of all the faculties for better use; if that
is so, a teacher must be more than ever alive to lead pupils to the
spirit of all they are to learn, and make the letter in every sense
suggestive of the spirit. First, care should be taken to give
something worth memorizing; secondly, ideas must be memorized before
the words. A word is a symbol, and in so far as we have the habit of
regarding it as such, will each word we hear be more and more
suggestive to us. With this habit well cultivated, one sees more in
a single glance at a poem than many could see in several readings.
Yet the reader who sees the most may be unable to repeat the poem
word for word. In cultivating the memory, the training should be
first for the attention, then for the imagination and the power of
suggestive thought; and from the opening of these faculties a true
memory will grow. The mechanical power of repeating after once
hearing so many words is a thing in itself to be dreaded. Let the
pupil first see in mind a series of pictures as the poem or page is
read, then describe them in his own words, and if the words of the
author are well worth remembering the pupil should be led to them
from the ideas. In the same way a series of interesting or helpful
thoughts can be learned.

Avoidance of mere mechanism cannot be too strongly insisted upon;
for exercise for attaining a wholesome, natural guidance of mind and
body cannot be successful unless it rouses in the mind an
appreciation of the laws of Nature which we are bound to obey. A
conscious experience of the results of such obedience is essential
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