Whatever may be urged against the present complete limitation of the female memory to the sphere of sexuality and conjugal life, it is to me quite evident. Various arguments about girls’ schools, and so forth, I am prepared for. These difficulties will have to be cleared away later. But I must just say again that all memory, which is to be used as a means of psychological definition of the individual, can include only the memory of what has been learnt when learning means actual experience. The explanation of the discontinuity in the psychical life of women (reference to which is introduced here, only because it is a necessary psychological factor in the problem of memory, and without reference to its spiritualistic or idealistic significance) can be reached only when the nature of continuity is studied with reference to the deepest problems of philosophy and psychology. As a proof of the fact I will at present quote nothing more than the statement of Lotze, which has so often caused astonishment, that women much more readily submit themselves to new relationships and more easily accommodate themselves to them than men, in whom the parvenu can be seen much longer, whereas one might not be able to tell the peasant from the peeress, the woman brought up in poor surroundings from the patrician’s daughter. Later on I shall deal more exhaustively with this subject. At any rate, it will now be seen why (if neither vanity, desire for gossip, nor imitation drives them to it) only the better men write down recollections of their lives, and how I perceive in this a strong evidence of the connection between memory and giftedness. It is not as if every man of genius wished to write an autobiography: the incitement to autobiography comes from special, very deep-seated psychological conditions. But on the other hand, the writing of a full autobiography, if it is the outcome of a genuine desire, is always the sign of a superior man. For real faithful memory is the source of reverence. The really great would resist any temptation to give up his past in exchange for material advantage or mental health; the greatest treasures of the world, even happiness itself, he would not take in exchange for his memories. The desire for a draught of the waters of Lethe is the trait of mediocre or inferior natures. And however much a really great man, as Goethe says, may condemn and abhor his past failings, and although he sees others clinging fast to theirs, he will never smile at those past actions and failings of his own, or make merry over his early mode of life and thought.