s
particular joy is immediately intuited. And so with the assurance that
the present feeling, for example of love, is undying, that it is equal
to the most severe trials, and so on. A man is said to _feel_ at the
moment that it is so, though as the facts believed have reference to
absent circumstances and events, it is plain that the knowledge is by no
means intuitive.

At such times our minds are in a state of pure feeling: intellectual
discrimination and comparison are no longer possible. In this way our
emotions in the moments of their greatest intensity carry away our
intellects with them, confusing the region of pure imagination with that
of truth and certainty, and even the narrow domain of the present with
the vast domain of the past and future. In this condition differences of
present and future may be said to disappear and the energy of the
emotion to constitute an immediate assurance of its existence
absolutely.[104]

The great region for the illustration of these active illusions is that
of the moral and religious life. With respect to our real motives, our
dominant aspirations, and our highest emotional experiences, we are
greatly liable to deceive ourselves. The moralist and the theologian
have clearly recognized the possibilities of self-deception in matters
of feeling and impulse. To them it is no mystery that the human heart
should mistake the fictitious for the real, the momentary and evanescent
for the abiding. And they have recognized, too, the double bias in these
errors, namely, the powerful disposition to exaggerate the intensity and
persistence of a present feeling on the one hand, and on the other hand
to take a mere wish to feel in a particular way for the actual
possession of the feeling.

_Philosophic Illusions._

The opinion of theologians respecting the nature of moral introspection
presents a singular contrast to that entertained by some philosophers as
to the nature of self-consciousness. It is supposed by many of these
that in interrogating their internal consciousness they are lifted above
all risk of error. The "deliverance of consciousness" is to them
something bearing the seal of a supreme authority, and must not be
called in question. And so they make an appeal to individual
consciousness a final resort in all matters of philosophical dispute.

Now, on the face of it, it does not seem probable that this operation
should have an immunity from all liability to error. For the ma