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.