e has carried them into the distance they become unimportant; they
are not worth remembering and are soon forgotten, because their
importance merely consisted in being near.

* * * * *

It is only now and then that a man learns something; but he forgets the
whole day long.

Our memory is like a sieve, that with time and use holds less and less;
in so far, namely, as the older we get, the quicker anything we have
entrusted to our memory slips through it, while anything that was fixed
firmly in it, when we were young, remains. This is why an old man's
recollections are the clearer the further they go back, and the less
clear the nearer they approach the present; so that his memory, like his
eyes, becomes long-sighted ([Greek: presbus]).

That sometimes, and apparently without any reason, long-forgotten scenes
suddenly come into the memory, is, in many cases, due to the recurrence
of a scarcely perceptible odour, of which we were conscious when those
scenes actually took place; for it is well known that odours more easily
than anything else awaken memories, and that, in general, something of
an extremely trifling nature is all that is necessary to call up a
_nexus idearum_.

And by the way, I may say that the sense of sight has to do with the
understanding,[15] the sense of hearing with reason,[16] and the sense
of smell with memory, as we see in the present case. Touch and taste are
something real, and dependent on contact; they have no ideal side.

* * * * *

Memory has also this peculiarity attached to it, that a slight state of
intoxication very often enhances the remembrance of past times and
scenes, whereby all the circumstances connected with them are recalled
more distinctly than they could be in a state of sobriety; on the other
hand, the recollection of what one said or did while in a state of
intoxication is less clear than usual, nay, one does not recollect at
all if one has been very drunk. Therefore, intoxication enhances one's
recollection of the past, while, on the other hand, one remembers little
of the present, while in that state.

* * * * *

That arithmetic is the basest of all mental activities is proved by the
fact that it is the only one that can be accomplished by means of a
machine. Take, for instance, the reckoning machines that are so commonly
used in England at the present time, and solely for