nd's face out
of elements supplied by the new one. Owing to this cause, an illusion of
memory is apt to multiply itself, one man's assertion of what happened
producing by contagion a counterfeit of memory's record in other minds.

I said just now that we tend to project our present modes of experience
into the past. We paint our past in the hues of the present. Thus we
imagine that things which impressed us in some remote period of life
must answer to what is impressive in our present stage of mental
development. For example, a person recalls a hill near the home of his
childhood, and has the conviction that it was of great height. On
revisiting the place he finds that the eminence is quite insignificant.
How can we account for this? For one thing, it is to be observed that to
his undeveloped childish muscles the climbing to the top meant a
considerable expenditure of energy, to be followed by a sense of
fatigue. The man remembers these feelings, and "unconsciously reasoning"
by present experience, that is to say, by the amount of walking which
would now produce this sense of fatigue, imagines that the height was
vastly greater than it really was. Another reason is, of course, that a
wider knowledge of mountains has resulted in a great alteration of the
man's standard of height.

From this cause arises a tendency generally to exaggerate the
impressions of early life. Youth is the period of novel effects, when
all the world is fresh, and new and striking impressions crowd in
thickly on the mind. Consequently, it takes much less to produce a given
amount of mental excitation in childhood than in after-life. In looking
back on this part of our history, we recall for the most part just those
events and scenes which deeply stirred our minds by their strangeness,
novelty, etc., and so impressed themselves on the tablet of our memory;
and it is this sense of something out of the ordinary beat that gives
the characteristic colour to our recollection. In other words, we
remember something as wonderful, admirable, exceptionally delightful,
and so on, rather than as a definitely imagined event. This being so, we
unconsciously transform the past occurrence by reasoning from our
present standard of what is impressive. Who has not felt an unpleasant
disenchantment on revisiting some church, house, or park that seemed a
wondrous paradise to his young eyes? All our feelings are capable of
leading us into this kind of illusion. What se