The very fact that different people so often dispute about the dates and the order of past events experienced in common, shows pretty plainly that images of the same age tend to arise in the mind with very unequal degrees of vividness.
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.