Assimilative Memory; or, How to Attend and Never Forget

Prof. A. Loisette wishes to call the attention of those who are now for the first time becoming acquainted with his System of Memory Training, that he was the first teacher of a Memory System to announce and to insist that Memory is not a separate faculty whose office it is to carry the recollective burdens of the other faculties—but that Memory is a Physiological and Psychological property of each mental act, and that such act retains the traces and history of its own action.

There are as many memories as there are kinds of mental action, and that, therefore, Memory is always concrete, although, for convenience sake, we do speak of it in the abstract, and that consequently all Memory improvement means improvement of the Action or Manner of action of the Mental powers, and that what he imparts is the right way to use the Intellect and Attention.

Hence his System does make and must make better observers, clearer and more consecutive thinkers, and sounder reasoners as well as surer rememberers; that in short the fundamental principle of his System is Learn by Thinking, and that his achievements as a mind-trainer are completed when he has helped the student of his System to acquire the Habit of Attention and the Habit of Thinking on that to which he is attending on all occasions, which two Habits combined constitute the Habit of Assimilation, and that when this Habit of Assimilation is thus established in the pupil’s mind, the System as such is no longer consciously used.