# Ideatypics; or, an Art of Memory/Chapter 1

IDEATYPIC PRINCIPLES.
An art of Memory implies a certain education of the faculties to which, in consequence of the many fallacies in education, the teacher seldom turns his thoughts. There is a physical, a mental, and a moral training; and he that would understand either, must enter into a close consideration of its nature and value. Not greater care is required to rear the tenderest flower, than is required to foster the expanding mind: ordinary expressions, however, would not lead us to think so. How often do the intricate workings of the childish mind perplex us. How often are we posed by queries pertaining to the commonest things, while we are priding ourselves, perhaps, on our ability to answer many abstruse questions in science or in art.
The operations of a child’s mind are too subtile to be well scrutinized, or at once directed. Hence, parents are generally much better judges of the physical than the mental health of their children; and yet every one feels that he can say something on the teacher’s delicate and mysterious craft: ​why not prescribe also for our physicians, and help them in the exercise of their vocation? But they are properly qualified, and properly paid for their services. So let the teacher be—the public would be gainers. The teachers and the taught must advance together. The degradation of the teacher is the degradation of the taught.
The different effects perceived in the same class of pupils, shew the need of different appliances; but what the difference of treatment should be, or who is to prescribe, remains a question. Has no one thought that there might be a mode of passing from the “abstract to the concrete” or, from an abstraction to a type, in such a way, that the teacher might educate all who are not positively deficient, in much less time than usual, according to the different extent of their perceptive powers?
Pestalozzi and others half advanced the idea, when they introduced the excellent plan of throwing aside the use of mere abstract terms, when a sensible presentation of an object could be made. A few among the ancients and among the Germans perceived that the usual mode of acquiring knowledge was not based on right principles, and not suited to the faculties of mind; for man is preeminently constituted to perceive sensible objects: we have not even a knowledge of a mind, apart from revelation, but by the contact of our percep​tive powers with their proper object. As mind can only operate relatively, it must be in relation to its perceptions, and through them; hence the mind must lay hold of and retain all matters through the perceptive faculties, or it must apprehend abstractions, which is contrary to our observations of the connection subsisting in the several parts of our constitution. It may be said, indeed, that an educated mind can have, apart from the perception of externals, an intimate perception of an abstraction. It may appear so; but “every thing must have a handle,” as good Rowland Hill used to say; and every thing abstracted will be more or less apprehended and retained, as it comes into our mind under some imagined form, more or less like a form, or composed of forms that have been first received from the external world, through the ordinary perceptive powders. Our thoughts are thus led to perceive that there is a necessary co-operation of mind and body in all instances. The senses—the brain—and the mind, actively co-operate; and though the mind sometimes appears to work alone, it is because it falls back upon perceptions, previously acquired and retained in the memory. The brain is the organ of the mind; and as there are discovered laws which affect this material organ, in connection with mental as well as physical operation, it is our duty to attend to ​them, and to walk as nearly as possible with the design of nature. Nature, through whom we look up to nature’s God, has surrounded us with laws, never transgressed with impunity. The physical and organic laws “cast their shadows before us;” so that in the dazzling magnificence of the Creator’s power that shines forth in them, we may learn the Divine word that went forth with them—“Do these things and live.” Creation is a revelation of Jehovah’s will to man; and the searcher after truth there learns his imperative duty of obedience to every physical and organic law, or he pays the price of his neglect.
The equally imperative laws of mind, whose functions are manifested to us through physical organs, have been disregarded, because their effects are less easily traced, and less evidence of their certainty is manifest. Yet, can we suppose there is less certainty in the operations of God’s laws, as exhibited to us in the manifestation of mind, than there is in the manifestation of life through material organs? Can we think that the connection between the brain and the external world, admits of less certain laws than any other connection subsisting between matter, and in the connection of matter and spiritual essences? Can we, by anything like reasoning, arrive at the conclusion, that we verge upon something that is wild ​and extravagant—that owns no law, or is superior to all law? Mind must be subject to Omnipotence, and its operations certain; for it is subject to an influence, that, in no instance, directly or indirectly, admits of “variableness,”—to an influence, that, in no instance apart from the miraculous, manifests itself to man, except through the medium of a determinate channel—a steadfast law.
These remarks apply to the present system of education, which is one of incessant mental toil: all the soul’s energies are expended on the mere attainment of knowledge, without any time for subsequent useful application of it. The fagging system presents us with perhaps one eminent man amidst the mental and physical wreck of five hundred. In these remarks, I do not mean to depreciate application, but to speak of the waste or destruction of the mental powers, in misapplied or excessive toil.
The distribution and arrangement of power is well understood by machinists. There is with them no voluntary waste nor prostration of strength the laws of the Creator are sufficiently apprehended and attended to. The work done by them is not the worse for being done in a fraction of the time once employed: on the contrary, there is greater precision and greater certainty than ever before attained. He who understands this, and has ​learned some of the conditions of his own economy from Coombe, Brigham, and others, will at once perceive the value of the proposed distribution and management of mental power as detailed in Ideatypics. In referring to the necessity of a teacher’s acquaintance with certain principles, I do not mean that he should enter upon the study of Metaphysics, or dive into the subtleties of Locke, but that he should practise Education as an art, and follow it up as an inductive science,—that he should know the faculties and their objects, and the way in which nature will be most likely to assist his endeavors. For this purpose, I have given a classification of faculties, which is to be considered apart from every system, whatever its name or tendency, and tested by its own value, as the result of observation.
In attempting to give the most prominent simple faculties, and their modes or states, I shall be furnishing a starting-point, and a basis for future remarks.
I have presumed to differ from Locke when he classifies certain mental conditions as faculties; and I have no doubt that, by and by, many will presume as I do.
I recollect that, in a Court of Law, Dr. Elliot was decided to be insane, for asserting that the sun was inhabited; yet only eight years after​wards, the same opinion was expressed by Dr. Herschell, with great applause.
There are certain powers belonging to us, that may be called the Media of Perception, whose ready servants are the senses, and who stand in the way of these and the powers of reflection. Whatever our opinions may be, we must acknowledge that we have an observing group of faculties.
These primitive powers that help us to form simple ideas, are all served by Language, that finds in these two groups the materials of its exercise. It is a delightful task indeed, to observe the gradually manifested powers of a child as it applies language to the objects of the faculties. It should lead us to reflect on the laws of mental manifestation, that we may apply the principles in all our efforts to educate or improve the memory.
There is a group of feelings that come into play in the exercise of the observing group.
| Domestic | Group of Feelings that belong to human nature. |
| Preservative | Group of Feelings that belong to human nature. |
| Prudential | Group of Feelings that belong to human nature. |
| Regulative | Group of Feelings that belong to human nature. |
| Imaginative | Group of Feelings that belong to human nature. |
| Beneficent | Group of Feelings that belong to human nature. |
The whole are, more or less, influenced by reasoning faculties, by which we are led to discover, reflect, and decide upon
| Cause | and | Effect |
| Similarity | and” | Dissimilarity |
| Congruity | and” | Incongruity |
I might call these three faculties, with more effect, the Causal, Synthetical, and Analytical powers of the mind. It was necessary that I should speak of all the faculties, that the wide range of Memory might be apprehended, and the relation I have assigned it, in not calling it a faculty, understood.
There are states, conditions, or modes of operation of the faculties, that are usually called faculties, but erroneously. These we must attend to.
1. ATTENTION. Attention is a mode—a state—not a faculty. We must produce this state, and promote attention, by what Nature or Art has to present, directly connected with any subject, or, by a type; as, Science, by books; Virtue, by a crown interwoven with laurel, &c., or any more appropriate ​symbol. By this means, the senses and the observing group are exercised, and all the necessary powers employed, instead of a part.
2. PERCEPTION. Let the first part be well performed: the second, which is Perception, follows, in greater or less power, as a result arrived at by the proper activity of the faculties. Scarcely any description is now given in a publication without pictorial illustration; and, in the education of children, the value of pictures has been long understood. The first progress of a child’s mind is visible in its perception of similitudes, either in an object that has a real or fancied resemblance to a familiar object, or as a type, more or less like the prototype in the child’s mind. Every one’s faculties have within themselves, a connexion and mutual action, which we designate Association.
3. ASSOCIATION. This is an active condition or mode of operation of the faculties that we shall have to speak of more at large.
4. JUDGMENT. This is an attribute of all the faculties, implying discrimination. Each faculty discerns the limit of its own function; and each perception takes, as it were, its own distinctive marks and boundaries. Not any two perceptions, perhaps, are found ​alike in any two minds. To improve the Judgment is a most important point, and never ought to be lost sight of in improving the Memory.
We see, then, from what has been said, that Association is a perceptive condition or mode of operation; and Judgment an attribute of the faculties; and that Perception is a condition or mode of operation; and that all the conditions are alike improvable states; and that memory, the last of the conditions, is most cultivated when all the mental conditions are attended to.
We shall enlarge upon the different principles of this System in relation to these conditions of mind.