d's eye
as being within the scope of your vision while your entire attention is
apparently absorbed in these lines. You see these other things, and you
can look back and realize that you have seen them, but you were not
aware of them at the time.

Let two individuals of contrary tastes take a day's outing together.
Both may have during the day practically identical sensory images; but
each one will come back with an entirely different tale to tell of the
day's adventures.

[Sidenote: _Waxen Tablets_]

_All sensory impressions, somehow or other, leave their faint impress on
the waxen tablets of the mind. Few are or can be voluntarily recalled._

Just where and how memories are retained is a mystery. There are
theories that represent sensory experiences as actual physiological
"impressions" on the cells of the brain. They are, however, nothing but
theories, and the manner in which the brain, as the organ of the mind,
keeps its record of sensory experiences has never been discovered.
Microscopic anatomy has never reached the point where it could identify
a particular "idea" with any one "cell" or other part of the brain.

[Sidenote: _Not How, but How Much_]

For us, the important question is not _how_, but _how much_; _not the
manner in which, but the extent to which_, sensory impressions are
preserved. Now, all the evidences indicate that _absolutely every
impression received upon the sensorium is indelibly recorded in the
mind's substance_. A few instances will serve to illustrate the
remarkable power of retention of the human mind.

Sir William Hamilton quotes the following from Coleridge's "Literaria
Biographia": "A young woman of four- or five-and-twenty, who could
neither read nor write, was seized with a nervous fever, during which,
according to the asseverations of all the priests and monks of the
neighborhood, she became 'possessed,' and, as it appeared, by a very
learned devil. She continued incessantly talking Latin, Greek and Hebrew
in very pompous tones, and with most distinct enunciation. Sheets full
of her ravings were taken down from her own mouth, and were found to
consist of sentences coherent and intelligible each for itself but with
little or no connection with each other. Of the Hebrew, a small portion
only could be traced to the Bible; the remainder seemed to be in the
Rabbinical dialect."

[Sidenote: _Remembering the Unperceived_]

The case was investigated by a physician, who learned that