of times it happens.
Hence we are better able to remember the events of our early than of
our later years. The longer we live, the fewer are the things that
we can call important or significant enough to deserve further
consideration, and by this alone can they be fixed in the memory; in
other words, they are forgotten as soon as they are past. Thus it is
that time runs on, leaving always fewer traces of its passage.

Further, if disagreeable things have happened to us, we do not care
to ruminate upon them, least of all when they touch our vanity, as is
usually the case; for few misfortunes fall upon us for which we can
be held entirely blameless. So people are very ready to forget many
things that are disagreeable, as well as many that are unimportant.

It is from this double cause that our memory is so short; and a man's
recollection of what has happened always becomes proportionately
shorter, the more things that have occupied him in life. The things
we did in years gone by, the events that happened long ago, are like
those objects on the coast which, to the seafarer on his outward
voyage, become smaller every minute, more unrecognizable and harder to
distinguish.

Again, it sometimes happens that memory and imagination will call up
some long past scene as vividly as if it had occurred only yesterday;
so that the event in question seems to stand very near to the present
time. The reason of this is that it is impossible to call up all the
intervening period in the same vivid way, as there is no one figure
pervading it which can be taken in at a glance; and besides, most of
the things that happened in that period are forgotten, and all that
remains of it is the general knowledge that we have lived through
it--a mere notion of abstract existence, not a direct vision of some
particular experience. It is this that causes some single event
of long ago to appear as though it took place but yesterday: the
intervening time vanishes, and the whole of life looks incredibly
short. Nay, there are occasional moments in old age when we can
scarcely believe that we are so advanced in years, or that the long
past lying behind us has had any real existence--a feeling which is
mainly due to the circumstance that the present always seems fixed and
immovable as we look at it. These and similar mental phenomena are
ultimately to be traced to the fact that it is not our nature in
itself, but only the outward presentation of it, that lie