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,