The following considerations will confirm the truth of these facts. In our advanced state of civilization, thought may, after so many ages' exercise, almost be said to have become part of the organism by the indisputable effect of heredity; and the phenomenon of the recurrence to memory of past facts and distant places is obvious and intelligible, since our judgment of them is never subject to illusion, or only in rare instances and in abnormal conditions. But this judgment is less obvious and easy in the case of primitive savages who have advanced little beyond the innate exercise of the intelligence. The rational analysis of the states of consciousness has not been made, and hence their special and general distinctions are seen with difficulty or not seen at all. Consequently the primitive and natural amazement of man must have been great, when by day, and still more in the lonely silence of night, persons, places, and his own past acts recurred to his mind, and he was able to contemplate them as if they were actually present. He was incapable of giving an explanation of this marvellous fact in the rational and reflective manner which is possible to psychologists and to all civilized men. This revival of the past appeared to him as a fact in its simple and spontaneous reality; he made no attempt to explain it, but it was presented to his consciousness like all other natural facts. The only explanation of the phenomenon appeared to him to be that these images did not recur to the mind by the necessary action of the brain, but that by their own spontaneous power they were recalled to take their part within his breast: he supposed the phenomenon to be objective, not subjective.
Prophecy, for instance, was often supposed to be a recollection, and some primitive accounts of the genesis of things, handed down by tradition, were reputed to be inspired, and objectively dictated to the mind. The Platonic theory of reminiscence relies on these conceptions. The power which recalled the images to memory was supposed to be external, and identical with that which raises up the images of dreams; primitive man traced a fanciful identity between the phenomena of memory and of dreams, and the distinction between them was not supposed to consist in the actual images, but in the modes of their appearance in the waking or sleeping state. The images assumed in the memory a relative reality, somewhat resembling those of dreams. In fact, some savages do not clearly distinguish between the images of these states, and see little difference between the spontaneous recollection of things, the fancy, and dreaming. This also occurs in children, who at a very early age often call by name absent persons and things which recur to their memory; and on the other hand they do not distinguish the facts of real life from those of dreams. I have observed this fact in several children.