Distance in space decreases the size of things, for it contracts them and so makes their defects and deficiencies disappear.  This is why everything looks so much finer in a contracting mirror or in a camera obscura than it is in reality; and the past is affected in the same way in the course of time.  The scenes and events that happened long ago, as well as the persons who took part in them, become a delight to the memory, which ignores everything that is immaterial and disagreeable.  The present possesses no such advantage; it always seems to be defective.  And in space, small objects near at hand appear to be big, and if they are very near, they cover the whole of our field of vision; but as soon as we stand some little distance away they become minute and finally invisible.  And so it is with time:  the little affairs and misfortunes of everyday life excite in us emotion, anxiety, vexation, passion, for so long as they are quite near us, they appear big, important, and considerable; but as soon as the inexhaustible stream of time 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.

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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.

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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.