284 MEMORIES OF MY LIFE
instantly through long habit say " five." Or if we see those figures, we have a mental image, and write 5. Surely, Sound and Sight-symbols are not the only Sense-symbols by which arithmetic could be performed.
Leaving aside Colour, Touch, and Taste, I determined to try Smells. The scents chiefly used were peppermint, camphor, carbolic acid, ammonia, and aniseed. Each scent was poured profusely on cotton wool loosely packed in a brass tube, with a nozzle at one end. The other end was pushed tightly into a caoutchouc tube, whose free end was stopped with a cork. A squeeze of the tube caused a whiff of scented air to pass through the nozzle. .When the squeeze was relaxed, fresh air was sucked in and became scented by the way. I taught myself to associate two whiffs of peppermint with one of camphor, three of peppermint with one of carbolic acid, and so on. Next, I practised small sums in addition with the scents themselves, afterwards with the mere imagination of them. I banished without difficulty all visual and auditory associations, and finally succeeded perfectly. Thus I fully convinced myself of the possibility of doing sums in simple addition with considerable speed and accuracy, solely by imagined scents. I did not care to give further time to this, as I only wanted to prove a possibility, but did make a few experiments with Taste, that promised equally well, using salt, sugar, quinine, and citric acid.
I have once in my life experienced the influence of Personal Ascendancy in that high degree which
