unit. It may be simply
the peculiar sound or look of a pair that he notes, or it may be some
connection {337} of meaning. Perhaps the pair suggests an image or a
little story. After a few readings, he has the pairs so well in hand
that he can score almost one hundred per cent., if tested immediately.

But now suppose the experimenter springs a surprise, by asking the
subject, as far as possible, to recite the pairs in order, or to tell,
after completing one pair, what was the first word of the next pair.
The subject can do very little at this, and protests that the test is
not fair, since he "paid no attention to the order of the pairs, but
concentrated wholly on each pair separately". Had he expected to
recite the whole list of pairs in order, he would have noticed the
relationship of successive pairs, and perhaps woven them into a sort
of continued story.

In memorizing _connected passages_ of prose or poetry, the "facts
observed" are the general sense and drift of the passage, the meanings
of the parts and their places in the general scheme, the grammatical
structure of the sentences and phrases, and the author's choice of
particular words. Memorizing here is the same general sort of
observant procedure as with nonsense material, greatly assisted by the
familiar sequences of words and by the connected meaning of the
passage, so that a connected passage can be learned in a fraction of
the time needed to memorize an equally long list of unrelated words.
No one in his senses would undertake to memorize an intelligible
passage by the pure rote method, for this would be throwing away the
best possible aid in memorizing; but you will find students who fail
to take full advantage of the sense, because, reading along passively,
they are not on the alert for general trends and outlines. For fixing
in mind the sense of a passage, the essential thing is to see the
sense. If the student gets the point with absolute clearness, he has
pretty well committed it to memory.

{338}

Short-circuiting.

The peculiarities of words or syllables in a list or passage that is
being memorized, the relationships observed among the parts, and the
meanings suggested or imported into the material, though very useful
in the early stages of memorizing, tend to drop out of mind as the
material becomes familiar. A pair of syllables, "lub--mer", may have
first been associated by turning them into "love mother", but later
this meaning fades out,