Assimilative Memory; or, How to Attend and Never ForgetLoisette, A. (Alphonse)
Science
Assimilative Memory; or, How to Attend and Never Forget
Loisette, A. (Alphonse)
Mnemonics
_Analytic date and number words do not have to be memorised._--Seeing is
believing, and, in this case, _remembering_ too. If you thoroughly
master my system you can find, in most cases, analytic date and number
words without any difficulty, and by means of them you can remember
_thousands_ of dates and sets of figures, when without the system you
could have remembered only five or ten of them.
Suppose in your haste you failed to notice that "York" spells 47, and
you then proceed to try Inclusion by Genus and Species; regarding York
as the general word, you would find _New_ York as a species or kind of
York; the same with Yorkshire, Yorktown, York Minster, etc. In this way
you would, if your mastery of the Figure Alphabet were perfect, scarcely
fail to notice that York spells 47; but if you fail, you then try
Inclusion by Whole and Part, and run over the political divisions of the
State until you come to {R}o{ck}land County, and there you find in its
first two consonants the letters "r" and "ck" (the equivalent of "k" in
sound). These consonants spell 47. You would find the same consonants in
the County of He{r}{k}imer.
Suppose, however, that from unfamiliarity with the Figure Alphabet, or
from want of considerable practice, you do not succeed in noticing that
{R}o{ck}land or He{r}{k}imer contains the number 47, you try Inclusion by
Abstract and Concrete, and regarding the State of New York as the
Concrete, and the Abstract or characterizing epithet "{r}o{ck}y" as
applicable to New York, you would then find in that word "{r}o{ck}y" the
number 47.
If you did fail, you would try Exclusion, and you would find nothing
which is the antithesis of the area of New York. You might find,
however, a _weak form_ of Exclusion if you consider that the area is the
surface, and what is below the surface as the opposite of it. In the
latter case you would find in the words "E{r}ie {C}anal," which is a
great artificial channel running through a part of the State, the
letters "r" and "c" hard, which spell 47. A more exact Exclusion might
be found in the word "{r}i{ng}," which spells 47. For if we consider the
shape of the boundary of New York we would see that in no vague sense a
ring, as a circle, is the opposite of it.
But suppose that from a chronic absent-mindedness or an overworked
brain, or downright bad physical health or insufficient knowledge of the
system, you failed to see 47 in any of the foregoing cases, you would
try Concurrence. Considering that the State of New York is largely
agricultural, you would find that the implement of farming known as a
"{R}a{k}e" would spell 47; this would be a case of Concurrence. In a
political sense, the word "{r}i{ng}s" gives 47, as New York has been
celebrated for them.
All that the student requires is _one_ analytic word. I have gone
through the varieties of Inclusion, through Exclusion, and Concurrence,
merely to show _how to find_ analytic words and not because more than
one word was necessary.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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