hall hear a certain speaker to-morrow if I
go to the House of Commons.[140] However this be, the thing to note is
that such retrospective beliefs, when once formed, tend to approximate
in character to recollections. This is true even of new beliefs in
recent events directly made known by present objective consequences or
signs, as the snowstorm. For in this case there is commonly no conscious
comparison of the present signs with previously known signs, but merely
a direct quasi-mnemonic passage of mind from the present fact to its
antecedent. And it is still more true of long-entertained retrospective
beliefs. When, for example, the original grounds of an historical
hypothesis are lost sight of, and after the belief has hardened and
solidified by time, it comes to look much more like a recollection than
an expectation. As a matter of fact, we have seen, when studying the
illusions of memory, that our personal experience does become confused
with that of others. And one may say that all long-cherished
retrospective beliefs tend to become assimilated to recollections.

Here then, again, there seems to be room for illusion to arise. Even in
the case of a recent past event, directly made known by present
objective signs, the mind is liable to err just as in the case of
forecasting an immediately approaching event. And such error has all the
force of an illusion: its contradiction is almost as great a shock as
that of a recollection. When, for example, I enter my house, and see a
friend's card lying on the table, I so vividly represent to myself the
recent call of my friend, that when I learn the card is an old one which
has accidentally been put on the table, I experience a sense of
disillusion very similar to that which attends a contradicted
perception. The early crude stages of physical science abundantly
illustrate the genesis of such illusions.

It may be added that if there be any feeling present in the mind at the
time, the barest suggestion of something having happened will suffice to
produce the immediate assurance. Thus, an angry person is apt to hastily
accuse another of having done certain things on next to no evidence. The
love of the marvellous seems to have played a conspicuous part in
building up and sustaining the fanciful hypotheses which mark the dawn
of physical science.

Verbal suggestion is a common mode of producing this semblance of a
recollected event. By means of the narrative style, it vividly s