go.”  The one who learns quickly, provided he really learns it, retains it just as long and on the average longer than the one who learns much more slowly.  The danger, from a practical point of view, is that the quick learner, because of his ability, gets careless and learns the material only well enough to reproduce at the time, whereas the slow learner, because of his lack of ability, raises his efficiency to a higher level and therefore retains.  If the quick learner had spent five minutes more on the material, he would have raised his work to the same level as that of the slow one and yet have finished in perhaps half the time.

All through the discussion of kinds of memory the term “memory” should have been used in the plural, for after all we possess “memories” and not a single faculty memory which may be quick, or desultory, or permanent.  The actual condition of affairs is much more complex, for although it has been the individual who has been designated as quick or logical, it would be much more accurate to designate the particular memory.  The same person may have a splendid desultory memory for gossip and yet in science be of the logical type.  In learning French vocabularies he may have only a good immediate memory, whereas his memory for faces may be most lasting.  His ability to learn facts in history may class him as a quick learner, whereas his slowness in learning music may be proverbial.  The degree to which quickness of learning or permanence of memory in one line is correlated with that same ability in others has not yet been ascertained.  That there is some correlation is probable, but at present the safest way is to think in terms of special memories and special acquisitions.  Some experimental work has been done to discover the order in which special memories develop in children.  The results, however, are not in agreement and the experiments themselves are unsatisfactory.  That there is some more or less definite order of development, paralleling to a certain extent the growth of instincts, is probable, but nothing more definite is known than observation teaches.  For instance, every observer of children knows that memory for objects develops before memory for words; that memory for gestures preceded memory for words; that memory for oral language preceded memory for written language; that memory for concrete objects preceded memory for abstractions.  Further knowledge of the development of special memories should be accompanied by knowledge as to how far this development is dependent on training and to what extent lack of memory involves lack of understanding before it can be of much practical value to the teacher.