we found that a pure
representation may under certain circumstances simulate the appearance
of a presentation, that a mental image may approximate to a
sense-impression. In the case of the internal feelings this liability
shows itself in a still more striking form.

The higher feelings or emotions are distinguished from the simple
sense-feelings in being largely representative. Thus, a feeling of
contentment at any moment, though no doubt conditioned by the bodily
state and the character of the organic sensations or coenaesthesis,
commonly depends for the most part on intellectual representations of
external circumstances or relations, and may be called an ideal
foretaste of actual satisfactions, such as the pleasures of success, of
companionship, and so on. This being so, it is easy for imagination to
call up a semblance of these higher feelings. Since they depend largely
on representation, a mere act of representation may suffice to excite a
degree of the feeling hardly distinguishable from the actual one. Thus,
to imagine myself as contented is really to see myself at the moment as
actually contented. Again, the actor, though, as we shall see by-and-by,
he does not feel all that the spectator is apt to attribute to him,
tends, when vividly representing to himself a particular shade of
feeling, to regard himself as actually feeling in this way. Thus, it is
said of Garrick, that when acting Richard III., he felt himself for the
moment to be a villain.

We should expect from all this that in the act of introspection the mind
is apt, within certain limits, to find what it is prepared to find. And
since there is in these acts often a distinct wish to detect some
particular feeling, we can see how easy it must be for a man through
bias and a wrong focussing of the attention to deceive himself up to a
certain point with respect to the actual contents of his mind.

Let us examine one of these active illusions a little more fully. It
would at first sight seem to be a perfectly simple thing to determine at
any given moment whether we are enjoying ourselves, whether our
emotional condition rises above the pleasure-threshold or point of
indifference and takes on a positive hue of the agreeable or
pleasurable. Yet there is good reason for supposing that people not
unfrequently deceive themselves on this matter. It is, perhaps, hardly
an exaggeration to say that most of us are capable of imagining that we
are having enjoyment w