The picture of memory has unknowingly to myself been filled up by this unconscious process of shifting and rearrangement, and the idea of another person has by some odd accident got substituted for that of the real borrower.

If we could go deeply enough into the matter, we should, of course, be able to explain why this particular confusion arose.

We might find, for example, that the two persons were associated in my mind by a link of resemblance, or that I had dealings with the other person about the same time.

Similarly, when we manage to join an event to a wrong place, we may find that it is because we heard of the occurrence when staying at the particular locality, or in some other way had the image of the place closely associated in our minds with the event.

But often we are wholly unable to explain the displacement.
So far I have been speaking of the passive processes by which the past comes to wear a new face to our imaginations.