natural and an earlier developed state of mind than memory.  And so it seems probable that any mental image which happens to take hold on the mind, if not recognized as one of memory, or as corresponding to a fact in somebody else’s experience, naturally assumes the form of an expectation of a personal experience.  The force of the expectation will vary in general as the vividness and persistence of the mental image.  Moreover, it follows, from what has been said, that this force of imagination will determine what little time-character we ever give to these wholly ungrounded illusions.

We see, then, that any process of spontaneous imagination will tend to beget some degree of illusory expectation.  And among the agencies by which such ungrounded imagination arises, the promptings of feeling play the most conspicuous part.  A present emotional excitement may give to an imaginative anticipation, such as that of the prophetic enthusiast, a reality which approximates to that of an actually perceived object.  And even where this force of excitement is wanting, a gentle impulse of feeling may suffice to beget an assurance of a distant reality.  The unknown recesses of the remote future offer, indeed, the field in which the illusory impulses of our emotional nature have their richest harvest.

  “Thus, from afar, each dim discover’d scene
   More pleasing seems than all the past hath been;
   And every form, that Fancy can repair
   From dark oblivion, glows divinely there.”

The recurring emotions, the ruling aspirations, find objects for themselves in this veiled region.  Feelings too shy to burst forth in unseemly anticipation of the immediate future, modestly satisfy themselves with this remote prospect of satisfaction.  And thus, there arises the half-touching, half-amusing spectacle of men and women continually renewing illusory hopes, and continually pushing the date of their realization further on as time progresses and brings no actual fruition.

So far I have spoken of such expectations as refer to future personal experience only.  Growing individual experience and the enlargement of this by the addition of social experience enable us to frame a number of other beliefs more or less similar to the simple expectations just dealt with.  Thus, for example, I can forecast with confidence events which will occur in the lives of others, and which I shall not even witness; or again, I may even succeed in dimly descrying events, such as political changes or scientific discoveries, which will happen after my personal experience is at an end.  Once more, I can believe in something going on now at some distant and even inaccessible point of the universe, and this appears to involve a conditional expectation, and to mean that I am certain that I or anybody else would see the phenomenon, if we could at this moment be transported to the spot.