on, "to tear out the heart of any
book." Hazlitt said that Coleridge rarely read a book through, "but
would plunge into the marrow of a new volume and feed on all the
nutritious matter with surprising rapidity, grasping the thought of the
author and following out his reasonings to consequences of which he
never dreamt." Such a result is rarely attained even by the ablest of
men--but it is the ultimate goal at which every student should aim--an
aim in which he will be largely assisted by the ART OF ASSIMILATIVE
MEMORY.

There are four methods of learning abstracts: one is by Synthesis; the
other is by the Analytic-Synthetic Method, the third is mostly by
Assimilative Analysis, and the fourth method is by the memory developed
and trained by the System, but which is not consciously used.

(1) It is the novelties of Fact, Opinion, Illustration, &c., set forth
in your Abstract that you correlate together, thus: You correlate the
Title of the First Chapter to the Title of the Book; next, the Titles of
the Chapters to each other; and then you correlate, in each chapter, the
first leading idea or proposition to the title of the chapter, the
second leading idea to the first, &c., &c. In this way you will proceed
until you have absorbed all the _new ideas_, _facts_, _statistics_ or
_illustrations_, or whatever you wish to retain. You can then test
yourself on the work by calling to mind whatever you have thus cemented
together. If this is well done you will never have to do it again.

(2) We have already seen how to apply the Analytic-Synthetic Method in
learning by heart selections in Prose or Poetry, and same method can be
used in memorising an Abstract of such parts of a book as are new to the
reader. This method, too, once used in addition to what has been done by
the pupil, will make a further resort to it unnecessary.

(3) And the same remark applies to the third method.

(4) The fourth method is the pupil's final method.

The foregoing exhaustive methods of dealing with a book are recommended
to those only whose natural memories are not yet made powerfully
retentive by the System as a Memory-TRAINER. If, however, a Pupil
possesses a good natural memory and a mastery of the System as a Device
for memorising, and he has also greatly added to the power of his
Concentration as well as his memory by doing all the exercises, he _will
not use my System, even in the reading of the first book, except now and
then_--certainly