each other by the arrangement of their complex ideas. For though it be a
peculiar property of the memory to preserve the original order and
position of its ideas, while the imagination transposes and changes them,
as it pleases; yet this difference is not sufficient to distinguish them
in their operation, or make us know the one from the other; it being
impossible to recal the past impressions, in order to compare them with
our present ideas, and see whether their arrangement be exactly similar.
Since therefore the memory, is known, neither by the order of its complex
ideas, nor the nature of its simple ones; it follows, that the difference
betwixt it and the imagination lies in its superior force and vivacity. A
man may indulge his fancy in feigning any past scene of adventures; nor
would there be any possibility of distinguishing this from a remembrance
of a like kind, were not the ideas of the imagination fainter and more
obscure.

It frequently happens, that when two men have been engaged in any scene
of action, the one shall remember it much better than the other, and
shall have all the difficulty in the world to make his companion
recollect it. He runs over several circumstances in vain; mentions the
time, the place, the company, what was said, what was done on all sides;
till at last he hits on some lucky circumstance, that revives the whole,
and gives his friend a perfect memory of every thing. Here the person
that forgets receives at first all the ideas from the discourse of the
other, with the same circumstances of time and place; though he considers
them as mere fictions of the imagination. But as soon as the circumstance
is mentioned, that touches the memory, the very same ideas now appear in
a new light, and have, in a manner, a different feeling from what they
had before. Without any other alteration, beside that of the feeling,
they become immediately ideas of the memory, and are assented to.