So far, so good.  But what exactly is the cognitive act of remembering? And what distinguishes it from other mental events? If we are looking for full-blown analysis of memory from Reid, we're going to be disappointed.  Although Reid points to certain characteristics of memory (i.e., that the object must be in the past, that it provides immediate knowledge, that the thing remembered is distinct from the remembrance of it, etc), he seems to hold that it is in the end unanalyzable.  He writes: