That is to say, his recollection is partly true, though largely false.

He does really recall the similar feature, movement, or tone of voice; he only seems to himself to recall the rest of his friend's appearance; for, to speak correctly, he projects the present impression into the past, and constructs his friend's face out of elements supplied by the new one.

Owing to this cause, an illusion of memory is apt to multiply itself, one man's assertion of what happened producing by contagion a counterfeit of memory's record in other minds.
I said just now that we tend to project our present modes of experience into the past.

We paint our past in the hues of the present.

Thus we imagine that things which impressed us in some remote period of life must answer to what is impressive in our present stage of mental development.