Ideatypics; or, an Art of Memory/Conclusion
CONCLUSION.
I would add a few words, in conclusion, to the many examples I have given. Suppose you wish to study Botany, Natural History, Chemistry, Physiology, Anatomy, or any branch of Natural Philosophy, or any thing more abstract, as Logic, etc. Your first object should be to select a room or a series of localities, or depend on association only, if you please. Then read your subject carefully, and endeavour to form some ideas of your own upon it. After this, select the necessary tables or data of the science, and put them into some familiar form, or change them into objects, or view them under the form of some objects that you are pleased to select, or put them on objects connected with the subject you are studying, or make of them something artificial that shall contain a given portion of a subject, or locate specimens, as in Botany; when this is not practicable, draw the specimens and locate them.
Various modes may be resorted to. In Anatomy, the muscles and their points of attachment, the arteries, veins, &c., have their relative position, and only need associating. The various symptoms of disease may be associated as easily as the heads of a discourse. Locality, Number, and Association applies to every subject, and in their application the ingenuity of the pupil is well exercised. Natural Philosophy has some parts or objects more prominent than others—some differences or points of agreement that may be laid hold of—something striking or well known, that shall serve as a centre point to hundreds of facts that in their associated form may be located. General Grammar has its nine places, in which objects can be put, and on which can be written, or with which can be associated much more than is necessary to be known. Logic, with all its forms of reasoning, can be associated. He that can use logic, has ingenuity enough to associate. Chemistry has in its affinities typical chains: to its numeral data our chapter on Number applies: to the divisions of the subject our chapter on Locality applies.—Association will provide various forms and connections in the concentration of the matter.—Natural History has, in the names of the Orders, sufficient points for association, according to Case III. and the example given. In short, methods have been detailed, as far as generalizing principles will allow in this small treatise.
Finally, to shew how practice will help any one to associate with more or less ease, according to his ability, I would mention the case of one of my pupils, aged 12, who had to associate the whole of the history of Charles I. with the capitals contained in the name of the king. In his progress, he came to the r in Charles, and with this he had to connect the principles of the three parties in England as follows: "The moderate Royalists were for reducing the prerogative within proper bounds, but for preserving monarchy and episcopacy; the Presbyterians were for preserving monarchy, but abolishing episcopacy; and the Independents were for abolishing both monarchy and episcopacy, and establishing a republic." The r contains three parts, said he,—the upright, the circular, and the tail piece; the last taken away leaves a p; the last two taken away leaves an i. The Royalists will have the r complete, but smaller. The Presbyterians will have only the p (their name directs us as to what they would exclude). The Independents will have only the i, and dispense with the other two parts. The letters r, p, i, are the initial letters of the three bodies, and thus lead us from a point as it were to all the matter in connection. Nothing like this could have been done without the application of the pupil. He that expects to know any subject from merely reading or studying this book, has made a great mistake as to its nature; and he that imagines difficulties are now to be surmounted without his own application, had better go and learn a few lessons of nature and her operations, in connection with all that man has power to achieve.