Sometimes pictures of very remote incidents may suddenly present themselves to our minds with a singular degree of brightness and force.  And when this is the case, there is a disposition to think of them as near.  If the relations of the event to other events preceding and succeeding it are not remembered, this momentary illusion will persist.  We have all heard persons exclaim, “It seems only yesterday,” under the sense of nearness which accompanies a recollection of a remote event when vividly excited.  The most familiar instance of such lively reproduction is the feeling which we experience on revisiting the scene of some memorable event.  At such a time the past may return with something of the insistence of a present perceived reality.  In passing from place to place, in talking with others, and in reading, we are liable to the sudden return by hidden paths of association of images of incidents that had long seemed forgotten, and when they thus start up fresh and vigorous, away from their proper surroundings, they invariably induce a feeling of the propinquity of the events.

In many cases we cannot say why these particular images, long buried in oblivion, should thus suddenly regain so much vitality.  There seems, indeed, to be almost as much that is arbitrary and capricious in the selection by memory of its vivid images as in the selection of its images as a whole; and, this being so, it is plain that we are greatly exposed to the risk of illusion from this source.

There is an opposite effect in the case of recent occurrences that, for some reason or another, have left but a faint impression on the memory; though this fact is not, perhaps, so familiar as the other.  I met a friend, we will suppose, a few days since at my club, and we exchanged a few words.  My mind was somewhat preoccupied at the time, and the occurrence did not stamp itself on my recollection.  To-day I meet him again, and he reminds me of a promise I made him at the time.  His reminder suffices to restore a dim image of the incident, but the fact of its dimness leads to the illusion that it really happened much longer ago, and it is only on my friend’s strong assurances, and on reasoning from other data that it must have occurred the day he mentions, that I am able to dismiss the illusion.

The most striking examples of the illusory effect of mere vividness, involving a complete detachment of the event from the prominent landmarks of the past, are afforded by public events which lie outside the narrower circle of our personal life, and which do not in the natural course of things become linked to any definitely localized points in the field of memory.  These events may be very stirring and engrossing for the time, but in many cases they pass out of the mind just as suddenly as they entered it.  We have no occasion to revert to them, and if by chance we are afterwards reminded of them, they are pretty certain to look too near, just because the fact of their having greatly interested us has served to render their images particularly vivid.