[Sidenote:  How Habits Are Formed]

As infants we learn to walk only by giving to every movement of the limbs the most deliberate conscious attention.  Yet, in time, the complicated co-operation of muscular movements involved in walking becomes involuntary and unconscious, so that we are no longer even aware of them.

It is the same with reading, writing, playing upon musical instruments, the manipulation of all sorts of mechanical devices, the thousand and one other muscular activities that become what we call habitual.

The moment one tries to make these habitual activities again dependent on the conscious will he encounters difficulties.

    “The centipede was happy quite,
    Until the toad, for fun,
    Said, ‘Pray which leg goes after which?’
    This stirred his mind to such a pitch,
    He lay distracted in a ditch,
    Considering how to run.”

All these habitual activities are started as acts of painstaking care and conscious attention.  All ultimately become unconscious. They may, however, be started or stopped at will.  They are, therefore, still related to the conscious mind.  They occupy a semi-automatic middle ground between conscious and subconscious activities.

THE FALLACY OF MOST MEMORY SYSTEMS

[Illustration:  Decorative Header]

CHAPTER VI

THE FALLACY OF MOST MEMORY SYSTEMS

[Sidenote:  Practice in Memorizing Inadequate]

It is evident that if what we have been describing as the process of recall is true, then the commonly accepted idea that practice in memorizing makes memorizing easier is false, and that there is no truth in the popular figure of speech that likens the memory to a muscle that grows stronger with use.

So far as the memory is concerned, however, practice may result in a more or less unconscious improvement in the methods of memorizing.

By practice we come to unconsciously discover and employ new associative methods in our recording of facts, making them easier to recall, but we can certainly add nothing to the actual scope and power of retention.

[Sidenote:  Torture of the Drill]

Yet many books on memory-training have wide circulation whose authors, showing no conception of the processes involved, seek to develop the general ability to remember by incessant practice in memorizing particular facts, just as one would develop a muscle by exercise.

The following is quoted from a well-known work of this character: