Looking Back For Our Future

"How each of us developed himself, what he strove for, attained, or missed, what objects he formerly pursued and what plans and wishes his heart is now set on, what transformation his views have experienced, what perturbations his principles -- in short, how he has today become what yesterday or years ago he was not -- this he brings out again from his memory with more or less ease, and he feels with a special vividness what changes have taken place in himself when he has before his eyes the unrolling of another's life... Let us therefore look into the activities our forefathers busied themselves with."

From The Ego And Its Own, 1845