What I desired was entirely to forget.
There were the boyhood memories of other times and places--the "trailing clouds of glory" of Wordsworth.

If a boy had had these memories, were they irretrievably lost when he had grown to manhood?
Could this particular content of his boy brain be utterly eliminated?
Or were these memories of other times and places still residual, asleep, immured in solitary in brain cells similarly to the way I was immured in a cell in San Quentin?
Solitary life-prisoners have been known to resurrect and look upon the sun again.

Then why could not these other-world memories of the boy resurrect?
But how?
In my judgment, by attainment of complete forgetfulness of present and of manhood past.
And again, how?
Hypnotism should do it.

If by hypnotism the conscious mind were put to sleep, and the subconscious mind awakened, then was the thing accomplished, then would all the dungeon doors of the brain be thrown wide, then would the prisoners emerge into the sunshine.
So I reasoned--with what result you shall learn.

But first I must tell how, as a boy, I had had these other-world memories.