This assertion may be true,
but it may also be false; for the same person may twice learn (from
some teacher), or twice discover (i.e. excogitate), the same fact.
Accordingly, the act of recollecting ought (in its definition) to be
distinguished from these acts; i.e. recollecting must imply in those
who recollect the presence of some spring over and above that from
which they originally learn.
Acts of recollection, as they occur in experience, are due to the
fact that one movement has by nature another that succeeds it in
regular order.
If this order be necessary, whenever a subject experiences the
former of two movements thus connected, it will (invariably)
experience the latter; if, however, the order be not necessary, but
customary, only in the majority of cases will the subject experience
the latter of the two movements. But it is a fact that there are
some movements, by a single experience of which persons take the
impress of custom more deeply than they do by experiencing others many
times; hence upon seeing some things but once we remember them
better than others which we may have been frequently.
Whenever therefore, we are recollecting, we are experiencing certain
of the antecedent movements until finally we experience the one
after which customarily comes that which we seek.
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