Sentence:  Emerson , in his lecture , refers to the `` startling experience which almost every person confesses in daylight , that particular passages of conversation and action have occurred to him in the same order before , whether dreaming or waking , a suspicion that they have been with precisely these persons in precisely this room , and heard precisely this dialogue , at some <WSD>former</WSD> hour , they know not when '' . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  referring to the first of two things or persons mentioned (or the earlier one or ones of several); I prefer the former version to the latter one"