Memorizing the Declaration of Independence
In Congress, July 4th, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America.
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the Earth the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these rights are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
Every time I recite these words, I get a shiver from the power of their conviction and the consequence of their existence. These statements are but the beginning of the discourse that declares the birth of a new nation, caused by a separation from the most powerful Empire on the face of the Earth.
The Power of Words
The causes which impelled them to the separation were not light, nor transient. A repeated history of injury and a long train of abuses and usurpations that led invariably to the direct object of absolute despotism over them forced the obligation of their duty to overthrow the impositions of an empire, declaring themselves a new nation among the existing nations of the Earth. A declaration of such magnitude so as to only be justified by appeal to the Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of its intentions. Their only refuge was their own lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.
There are approximately one thousand three hundred and twenty words in the main body of the Declaration of Independence. These beautiful words, gilded by eighteenth-century enlightenment, are not the words we commonly use today. Perhaps we should use more of these words for society to benefit from a spirit of consanguinity. There is nothing quite like internalizing these words. So, in time for July 4th, I have memorized the Declaration of Independence, word for word.
My Goal, My Purpose
Just like I had memorized one thousand digits of the number Pi for Pi day, I have memorized the Declaration of Independence for Independence Day, 2019. The purpose of doing so was manifold. Just as one gains strength and stamina by repeated physical exercise, one gains a cognitive advantage by pursuing a similar use of memory. The Declaration is a magnificent document that describes the raw spirit of Freedom of Will. This Freedom of Will, a cornerstone of what it is to be human. Memorizing the Declaration of Independence also was a bucket-list item for me. Now having this entirely in memory, I can carry it forward through my remaining years to call upon the words whenever I want to bolster the courage of Will.
The Memory Strategies
How one remembers over thirteen hundred words precisely in order is the point of the remainder of this article. The method I used has numerous applications. I use the strategy described in this article to memorize anything from quotes and passages to cybersecurity standards and guidelines, computer software code, numbers, formulas, meetings, or whatever else I need to remember. There is no magic to this strategy, only method.
The Method of Loci
The Method of Loci is a mnemonic strategy with a history dating back to classical Greece. Orators used the Method of Loci to remember the content of long speeches. The Rhetorica ad Herennium, one of the oldest texts on rhetoric dating back to 80 BCE whos authorship is unknown but attributed to Cicero, describes an artificial memory system that can be strengthened by training and discipline which when described is the method of loci.
(Rhetorica ad Herennium, Wikipedia)
The method of loci uses, as the Rhetorica ad Herennium states, “backgrounds” that are familiar to the memorizer which contain distinct places upon which images are placed in the mind’s eye. These images symbolically represent the concepts or material to be memorized.
These backgrounds, also known as journeys, in this case, are familiar places that you know well, such as your home, your place of work, your town, or the like. The main qualities that qualify a journey are that you can see and navigate it in your mind.
To use a journey to memorize information, you identify specific, distinct, ordered, and consistently placed locations on the journey upon which you can impose mental imagery. When identifying locations, it is best to pick distinct places by taking a consistent path through the journey. This path should be the natural way you would navigate the scenery in your mind. It should be smooth and as frictionless to the thoughts as possible to go from one location to the next. The less you have to re-identify the location, the more useful this method will be for you. Pick a consistent navigation style, for instance, counterclockwise and linear, that is best suited for the journey that you will use. Try playing with different navigational styles for different journeys to see which ones work best for you. Part of this discovery is navigating the journey forwards and backward. Navigating a journey both ways tests how effectively fluid it will be for use.
If you were to use your home as a memory journey, you may come in from the front door and navigate counterclockwise through the first room following the natural path from room to room, picking out distinct places such as a window, fireplace mantle, television, bookshelf, and so on, as your locations.
Each location should be distinct and consistent. For example, you choose a window in a room with many windows, it’s best to pick the locations on unique windows and select only one of a kind of a similar group. Furthermore, you will find your places to be most useful if you are specific with how you visualize them in your mind. The specificity of image and perspective helps make these places better mental hooks to hang information.
Making Mental Images
This mental imagery represents the information you want to remember. You make these mental images by asking yourself what the concept or information reminds you of, then by using your imagination to deliver the answers. Generating mental imagery like this relies heavily on the imagination. It’s best to get into a state of playfulness with your thoughts because that is how you will discover the most powerful imagery. Yes, using the imagination in playful and unusual ways is a very different experience than the typical seriousness of the material that one may normally have to memorize. It is fun, however, and honestly, it may become the best part of your job.
When breaking concepts and information down into mental imagery, ask yourself the following questions. “What does this remind me of?” “What does this sound like?” “Who does this remind me of?” And answer the questions with what comes to your imagination. The mental imagery will most likely not make logical sense. It doesn’t need to, nor will making logical sense have the most impact on your memory. As a matter of fact, what works best are the mental images that are the most outrageous that key your mind to remember the word or concept.
In a respect, it is unfortunate that we’re in a world of text because the mind works best with visualizations, senses, and feeling. Text can capture, describe, and elicit these qualities, but it requires mental translation.
This was the method that I used to memorize the Declaration of Independence. I started with familiar spots in my home town. In my mental journey, I walked down the main street, virtually walking into each building. While inside, I wandered around clockwise in my recollection, remembering in order the familiar things inside each building. Place by place I would repeat, going up the street. In each building, I would mentally identify and document a set of locations upon which I would later place the mental imagery that represents the words of the Declaration of Independence. I documented the locations so that I would have a consistent recall. I skipped the buildings that I wasn’t familiar with, and for those places that I was somewhat unsure of, I allowed myself to “fictionally remember” some locations.
Applying Memory Strategies to the Declaration of Independence
In total, I identified about one thousand unique and ordered locations going up the street. It was easier than it seems because these were all familiar locations that I could remember from my childhood, and I had a natural way of navigating them through my mind. The documentation was for consistency when I mentally mapped the Declaration of Independence text.
Memorizing “In Congress, July 4th, 1776”
After identifying the one thousand locations, I then deconstructed the text into mental imagery, ten or so words at a time. Fortunately, much of the Declaration of Independence is already memorable as it is a part of the fabric of our culture. I would seek to follow the patterns of the text, identifying and creating key mental images for groups of words. For instance, “In Congress, July 4th, 1776” is easy because, at the first location, I recalled the famous painting by John Trumbull of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
John Trumbull’s painting “The Signing of the Declaration of Independence”
Trumbull’s painting reminded me of a scene “In Congress,” and the date is a well-known date. I placed this image on the first location by seeing the Trumbull painting smashed into the first spot on the journey: the front window of a (no longer there) pharmacy window. The window had a white lattice frame, and I imagined the painting smashing through the window being sliced into a dozen smaller pieces by the lattice window frame. The members of Congress on the picture were none too happy by the separation, neither as imagined seeing Thomas Jefferson protesting angrily against being separated in two.
Memorizing “The unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America”
“The unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America” was more work. The word “the” was assumed in this case, but “unanimous” was not. It took some breaking down. What does it remind me of? What does it sound like? Using the mental imagery that first came to mind for “unanimous” turned out to be a trap in subsequent rehearsals. At first, I had imagined a group of people singing together “unanimously.” After rehearsing shortly later, I couldn’t remember what the image of the chorus was supposed to represent. Finding this mental image not working so well I chose to break “unanimous” down by how it sounds: “you,” “nan,” “ie,” and “mouse.” “You-nan-ie-mouse.” I then asked myself, what do these sounds trigger in my imagination? “You…” to a Boston Red Sox baseball fan, such as myself, reminds me of Kevin Youkilis who played for the Red Sox from 2004 to 2012. When he would come to bat, the crowd would yell out, “You…!!!” So that worked for me. Your mileage may vary. Then this is where the mental imagery gets creative — I would imagine Kevin Youkilis, dressed in a giant flatbread Naan (a delicious Indian flatbread), swinging his bat at the giant eye on a large, fat, brown mouse. So the imagery goes as follows: “YOU(kilis)-Naan-Eye-Mouse.” Seeing Kevin swinging the bat and hitting the imaginary eye of the big fat brown mouse. Try it a few times. This image I placed on the front door, visualizing the fat mouse crashing back through the door. What a sight.
The rest of this sentence, “…Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America,” whose image I place on the cash register inside, was a natural mental composition. I knew this activity was about the Declaration, so I imagined a picture of the Declaration of Independence being dusted off on the cash register by the Betsy Ross Flag which has thirteen stars representing the Thirteen United States of America. But, wait a minute, you say? Was the flag dusting off the Declaration on the cash register? How is that possible? That is possible in the Disney-like imagination of the mind. Just like Walt Disney Production’s movie “Fantasia”, you can see what were once inanimate objects come to life by the magic of your imagination.
And that is exactly how I captured the whole of the Declaration of Independence using the method of loci. I progressed ten or so words at a time, making mental imagery for either individual words or phrases, putting them on the locations identified by the method of loci approach, and then testing them by rehearsal to see if these images worked or not, improving the imagery as I went along.
Making it Stick
To make sure that the mental images stuck on my memory journey, I followed a spaced repetition schedule of rehearsal. Spaced repetition rehearsal, or just spaced repetition for this purpose, is the practice of rehearsing information that you’ve learned over repeated periods of time. The method of loci is a powerful memory strategy but to keep the information, particularly any information of such length and detail as the Declaration of Independence, requires a reinforcement rehearsal schedule to bake it into your wetware.
The spaced repetition schedule that I roughly followed was as follows. After putting the imagery for the words down on memory journey, I would immediately rehearse the imagery in my mind and determine if I could recite the text from the imagery. In doing so, I discovered where the mental imagery worked well and where it did not. Where it did not work, I would create new mental imagery and rework the short journey again, followed by immediate rehearsal. Once that was solid, I would then schedule the next spaced repetition of rehearsal for ten minutes later. At that time I would do more or less the same thing as the immediate rehearsal. Subsequently, would then rehearse the passages an hour, then three hours later, ultimately seeming the smaller passages incrementally together into the full text which then was then rehearsed daily.
Practicing spaced repetition did interrupt putting down the words onto the memory journey, but you get used to the cadence of memorize — rehearsal — memorize — rehearsal, particularly once you lapse in the rehearsal and have to re-do significant parts of the journey that you so belabored to put together.
Time Invested, Time Well Spent
It took a little over a month of about fifteen minutes to an hour a day, a few days a week to complete. I continue the rehearsal schedule about once every other week, tuning and adjusting where a word or few may be off. It takes about 15 minutes to recite the Declaration of Independence from start to finish.
The experience of knowing, actually knowing, these words is something that you have to feel for yourself to understand. It is a very powerful and moving experience to be able to recite the Declaration of Independence word for word. And once you’ve got it memorized to a solid state it takes but fifteen minutes a month to keep some of the most powerful words ever written with you for your remaining years.