s probably at its best in the pre-adolescent and early
adolescent years. Logical memory is characteristic of mature, adult
minds. However, some people excel in one rather than another type, and
each renders its own peculiar service. A genius in any line finds a good
desultory memory of immense help, despite the fact that logical memory
is the one he finds most valuable. Teachers, politicians, linguists,
clerks, waiters, and others need a well-developed desultory memory. Rote
memory is, of course, necessary if an individual is to make a success as
an actor, a singer, or a musician.

According to the rate of acquisition memory has been classified into
quick and slow. One learner gets his material so much more quickly than
another. Up to rather recent years the quick learner has been
commiserated, for we believed, "quickly come, quickly go." Experimental
results have proved this not to be true, but in fact the reverse is more
true, _i.e.,_ "quickly come, slowly 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