And now let us pass to the question whether expectation ever takes the form of immediate knowledge.  It may, perhaps, be objected that the anticipation of something future cannot be knowledge at all in the sense in which the perception of something present or the recollection of something past is knowledge.  But this objection, when examined closely, appears to be frivolous.  Because the future fact has not yet come into the sphere of actual existence, it is none the less the object of a perfect assurance.[139]

But, even if it is conceded that expectation is knowledge, the objection may still be urged that it cannot be immediate, since it is the very nature of expectation to ground itself on memory.  I have already hinted that this is not the case, and I shall now try to show that what is called expectation covers much that is indistinguishable from immediate intuitive certainty, and consequently offers room for an illusory form of error.

Let us set out with the simplest kind of expectation, the anticipation of something about to happen within the region of our personal experience, and similar to what has happened before.  And let the coming of the event be first of all suggested by some present external fact or sign.  Suppose, for example, that the sky is heavy, the air sultry, and that I have a bad headache; I confidently anticipate a thunderstorm.  It would commonly be said that such an expectation is a kind of inference from the past.  I remember that these appearances have been followed by a thunderstorm very often, and I infer that they will in this new case be so followed.

To this, however, it may be replied that in most cases there is no conscious going back to the past at all.  As I have already remarked, anticipation is pretty certainly in advance of memory in early life.  And even after the habit of passing from the past to the future, from memory to expectation, has been formed, the number of the past repetitions of experience would prevent the mind’s clearly reverting to them.  And, further, the very force of habit would tend to make the transition from memory to expectation more and more rapid, automatic, and unconscious.  Thus it comes about that all distinctly suggested approaching events seem to be expected by a kind of immediate act of belief.  The present signs call up the representation of the coming event with all the force of a direct intuition.  At least, it may be said that if a process of inference, it is one which has the minimum degree of consciousness.

It might still be urged that the mind passes from the present facts as signs, and so still performs a kind of reasoning process.  This is, no doubt, true, and differentiates expectation from perception, in which there is no conscious transition from the presented to the represented.  Still I take it that this is only a process of reasoning in so far as the sign is consciously generalized, and this is certainly not true of early expectations, or even of any expectations in a wholly uncultivated mind.