en known to certify honestly, in courts of justice, to
facts which they think they personally witnessed, but which were really
pictured in their minds in other ways. The picture was so distinct and
vivid that they lost, in time, the power of distinguishing it from other
and, perhaps, similar pictures which had been made by their witnessing the
corresponding realities.

Indeed, instead of being surprised that these different origins of present
mental images are sometimes confounded, it is actually wonderful that they
can generally be so clearly distinguished; and we can not explain, even to
ourselves, what the difference is by which we do distinguish them.

For example, we can call up to our minds the picture of a house burning
and a fireman going up by a ladder to rescue some person appearing at the
window. Now the image, in such a case, may have had several different modes
of origin. 1. We may have actually witnessed such a scene the evening
before. 2. Some one may have given us a vivid description of it. 3. We may
have fancied it in writing a tale, and 4. We may have dreamed it. Here are
four different prototypes of a picture which is now renewed, and there is
something in the present copy which enables us, in most cases, to determine
at once what the real prototype was. That is, there is something in the
picture which now arises in our mind as a renewal or repetition of the
picture made the day before, which makes us immediately cognizant of the
cause of the original picture--that is, whether it came from a reality that
we witnessed, or from a verbal or written description by another person, or
whether it was a fanciful creation of our own mind while awake, or a dream.
And it is extremely difficult for us to discover precisely what it is, in
the present mental picture, which gives us this information in respect to
the origin of its prototype. It is very easy to say, "Oh, we _remember_."
But remember is only a word. We can only mean by it, in such a case as
this, that there is some _latent difference_ between the several images
made upon our minds to-day of things seen, heard of, fancied, or dreamed
yesterday, by which we distinguish each from all the others. But the most
acute metaphysicians--men who are accustomed to the closest scrutiny of the
movements and the mode of action of their minds--find it very difficult to
discover what this difference is.

_The Result in the Case of Children_.

Now, in the case of you