The furniture of a man's mind chiefly consists of his recollections and the bonds that unite them. As all this is the fruit of experience, it must differ greatly in different minds according to their individual experiences. I have endeavoured to take stock of my own mental furniture in the way described in the next chapter, in which it will be seen how large a part consists of childish recollections, testifying to the permanent effect of many of the results of early education. The same fact has been strongly brought out by the replies from correspondents whom I had questioned on their mental imagery. It was frequently stated that the mental image invariably evoked by certain words was some event of childish experience or fancy. Thus one correspondent, of no mean literary and philosophical power, recollects the left hand by a mental reference to the rocking-horse which always stood by the side of the nursery wall with its head in the same direction, and had to be mounted from the side next the wall. Another, a politician, historian, and scholar, refers all his dates to the mental image of a nursery diagram of the history of the world, which has since developed huge bosses to support his later acquired information. Our abstract ideas being mostly drawn from external experiences, their character also must depend upon the events of our individual histories. For example, the spoken words house and home must awaken ideas derived from the houses and the homes with which the hearer is, in one way or other, acquainted, and these could not be the same to persons of various social positions and places of residence. The character of our abstract ideas, therefore, depends, to a considerable degree, on our nurture. I doubt, however, whether "abstract idea" is a correct phrase in many of the cases in which it is used, and whether "cumulative idea" would not be more appropriate. The ideal faces obtained by the method of composite portraiture appear to have a great deal in common with these so-called abstract ideas. The composite portraits consist, as was explained, of numerous superimposed pictures, forming a cumulative result in which the features that are common to all the likenesses are clearly seen; those that are common to a few are relatively faint and are more or less overlooked, while those that are peculiar to single individuals leave no sensible trace at all.