After doing this the important principle is forced upon us in strong relief that it matters not in what period of life, or in what state, experiences have occurred, or how long a time has intervened since their occurrence; they may still be conserved. They become dormant, but under favorable conditions they may be awakened and may enter conscious life. We have seen, even by the few examples I have given, that childhood experiences that are supposed to have long been buried in oblivion may be conserved. We have seen that the mental life of artificial and pathological states is subject to the same principle; that the experiences of hypnosis, trance states, deliria, intoxication, dissociated personality—though there may be absolute amnesia in the normal waking state for them—may still be capable of reproduction as memory. Yet of the vast number of mental experiences which we have during the course of our lives we can voluntarily recall but a fractional part. What proportion of the others is conserved is difficult, if not impossible, to determine. The difficulty is largely a practical one due to the inadequacy of our technical methods of investigation. In the first place, our technic is only applicable to a limited number of persons. In the second place, it is obvious that when an episode—occurring in the course of everyday life—is forgotten, but is recovered under one or another of the conditions I have described, it is only in a minority of instances that circumstances will permit confirmation of this evidence by collateral and independent testimony. Still, if we take the evidence as a whole its cumulative force is such as to compel the conviction that a vast number of experiences, more than we can possibly voluntarily recall, are conserved, and that it is impossible to affirm that any given experience may not persist in a dormant state. It is impossible to say what experiences of our daily life have failed to be conserved and what are awaiting only a favorable condition of reproduction to be stimulated into activity as memory. Even if they cannot be reproduced by voluntary effort, or by some one particular device, they may be by another and, if all devices fail, they may be recovered in pathological conditions like delirium, trance, spontaneous hallucinations, etc., or in normal dissociated states like dreams. The inability to recall an experience is no evidence whatever that it is not conserved. Indeed, even when the special methods and moments fail it is still not always possible to say that it is not conserved.