due to the fact of oblivescence. Our
memories restore us only fragments of our past life. And just as objects
seen imperfectly at a great distance may assume a shape quite unlike
their real one, so an inadequate representation of a past event by
memory often amounts to misrepresentation. When revisiting a place that
we have not seen for many years, we are apt to find that our
recollection of it consisted only of some insignificant details, which
arranged themselves in our minds into something oddly unlike the actual
scene. So, too, some accidental accompaniment of an incident in early
life is preserved, as though it were the main feature, serving to give
quite a false colouring to the whole occurrence.

It seems quite impossible to account for these particular survivals,
they appear to be so capricious. When a little time has elapsed after an
event, and the attendant circumstances fade away from memory, it is
often difficult to say why we were impressed with it as we afterwards
prove to have been. It is no doubt possible to see that many of the
recollections of our childhood owe their vividness to the fact of the
exceptional character of the events; but this cannot always be
recognized. Some of them seem to our mature minds very oddly selected,
although no doubt there are in every case good reasons, if we could only
discover them, why those particular incidents rather than any others
should have been retained.

The liability to error resulting from mere oblivescence and the
arbitrary selection of mental images is seen most plainly, perhaps, in
our subsequent representation and estimate of whole periods of early
life. Our idea of any stage of our past history, as early childhood, or
school days, is built up out of a few fragmentary intellectual relics
which cannot be certainly known to answer to the most important and
predominant experiences of the time. When, for example, we try to decide
whether our school days were our happiest days, as is so often alleged,
it is obvious that we are liable to fall into illusion through the
inadequacy of memory to preserve characteristic or typical features, and
none but these. We cannot easily recall the ordinary every-day level of
feeling of a distant period of life, but rather think of exceptional
moments of rejoicing or depression. The ordinary man's idea of the
emotional experience of his school days is probably built up out of a
few scrappy recollections of extraordinary and exc