Not only so: when they grow up and their early recollections lose their definiteness, becoming a few fragments saved from a lost past, it must pretty certainly happen that if any ideas derived from these recitals are preserved, they will simulate the form of memories.

Thus, I have often caught myself for a moment under the sway of the illusion that I actually visited the Exhibition of 1851, the reason being that I am able to recall the descriptions given to me of it by my friends, and the excitement attending their journey to London on the occasion.

It is to be added that repetition of the act of imagination will tend still further to deepen the subsequent feeling that we are recollecting something.

As Hartley well observes, a man, by repeating a story, easily comes to suppose that he remembers it.[130] Here, then, we have another source of error that we must take into account in judging of the authenticity of an autobiographical narration of the events of childhood.

The more imaginative the writer, the greater the risk of illusion from this source as well as from that of dream-fancies.