Page:Memory; how to develop, train, and use it - Atkinson - 1919.djvu/177

Rh were, in separate bundles, and it is of the utmost importance that all the ideas that most nearly resemble each other be in one bundle.”

The best way to acquire correct associations, and many of them, for a separate fact that you wish to store away so that it may be recollected when needed—some useful bit of information or interesting bit of knowledge, that “may come in handy” later on—is to analyze it and its relations. This may be done by asking yourself questions about it—each thing that you associate it with in your answers being just one additional “cross-index” whereby you may find it readily when you want it. As Kay says: “The principle of asking questions and obtaining answers to them, may be said to characterize all intellectual effort.” This is the method by which Socrates and Plato drew out the knowledge of their pupils, filling in the gaps and attaching new facts to those already known. When you wish to so consider a fact, ask yourself the following questions about it:

I. Where did it come from or originate?

II. What caused it?

III. What history or record has it?