rain, owing to the absence of current
associations to call them up, disappear wholly. A comparison of old
memories with a newly-met friend of one's boyhood, about the events
we then witnessed together, show how much we had each of us forgotten.
Our recollections do not tally. Actors and incidents that seem to
have been of primary importance in those events to the one have been
utterly forgotten by the other. The recollection of our earlier
years are, in truth, very scanty, as any one will find who tries to
enumerate them.

My associated ideas were for the most part due to my own unshared
experiences, and the list of them would necessarily differ widely
from that which another person would draw up who might repeat my
experiments. Therefore one sees clearly, and I may say, one can see
_measurably_, how impossible it is in a general way for two
grown-up persons to lay their minds side by side together in perfect
accord. The same sentence cannot produce precisely the same effect on
both, and the first quick impressions that any given word in it may
convey, will differ widely in the two minds.

I took pains to determine as far as feasible the dates of my life at
which each of the associated ideas was first attached to the word.
There were 124 cases in which identification was satisfactory, and
they were distributed as in Table II.

TABLE II.
RELATIVE NUMBER OF ASSOCIATIONS FORMED AT DIFFERENT
PERIODS OF LIFE.
==============+==========================================+==============+
Total number | Occurring | Whose first |
of different |------------------------------------------+ formation |
Associations. | four | three | twice | once | was in |
| times. | times. | | | |
+--------| +-----| +-----| +-----| +-----| |
| per | |per | |per | |per | |per | |
| cent. | |cent.| |cent.| |cent.| |cent.| |
+--------|----+-----+----+-----+---+-----+----+-----+--------------+
48 | 39 | 12 | 10 | 11 | 9 | 9 | 7 | 16 | 13 | boyhood and |
| | | | | | | | | | youth, |
| | | | | | | | | | |
57 | 46 | 10 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 33 | 26 | subsequent