plain that since the apparent degree of remoteness of an event not
distinctly localized in the past varies inversely as the degree of
vividness of the mnemonic image, any conscious concentration of mind on
a recollection will tend to bring it too near. In this way, then, an
illusory propinquity may be given to a recalled event through a mere
desire to dwell on it, or even a capricious wish to deceive one's self.

When, for example, old friends come together and talk over the days of
yore, there is a gradual reinstatement of seemingly lost experiences,
which often partakes of the character of a semi-voluntary process of
self-delusion. Through the cumulative effect of mutual reminder,
incident after incident returns, adding something to the whole picture
till it acquires a degree of completeness, coherence, and vividness that
render it hardly distinguishable from a very recent experience. The
process is like looking at a distant object through a field-glass.
Mistiness disappears, fresh details come into view, till we seem to
ourselves to be almost within reach of the object.

Where the mind habitually goes back to some painful circumstance under
the impulse of a morbid disposition to nurse regret, this momentary
illusion may become recurring, and amount to a partial confusion of the
near and the remote in our experience. An injury long brooded on seems
at length a thing that continually moves forward as we move; it always
presents itself to our memories as a very recent event. In states of
insanity brought on by some great shock, we see this morbid tendency to
resuscitate the dead past fully developed, and remote events and
circumstances becoming confused with present ones.

On the other hand, in more healthy states of mind there presents itself
an exactly opposite tendency, namely, an impulse of the will to banish
whatever when recalled gives pain to the furthest conceivable regions of
the past. Thus, when we have lost something we cherished dearly, and the
recollection of it brings fruitless longing, we instinctively seek to
expel the recollection from our minds. The very feeling that what has
been can never again be, seems to induce this idea of a vast remoteness
of the vanished reality. When, moreover, the lost object was fitted to
call forth the emotion of reverence, the impulse to magnify the
remoteness of the loss may not improbably be reinforced by the
circumstance that everything belonging to the distant past