unpleasant, and comforting itself in tedious hours by framing little
plans for the future. I remember my old schoolmastering days, and the
hours I spent with a class of boys sitting in front of me; how
constantly one saw boys in the midst of their work, with pen suspended
and page unturned, look up with that expression denoting that some
vision had passed before the inward eye--which, as Wordsworth justly
observes, constitutes "the bliss of solitude"--obliterating for a
moment the surrounding scene. I do not mean that the thought was a
distant or an exalted one--probably it was some entirely trivial
reminiscence, or the anticipation of some coming amusement. But I do
not think I exaggerate when I say that probably the greater part of a
human being's unoccupied hours, and probably a considerable part of
the hours supposed to be occupied, are spent in some similar exercise
of the imagination. What a confirmation of this is to be found in the
phenomena of sleep and dreams! Then the instinct is steadily at work,
neither remembering nor anticipating, but weaving together the results
of experience into a self-taught tale.

And then if one considers later life, it is no exaggeration to say
that the greater part of human happiness and unhappiness consists in
the dwelling upon what has been, what may be, what might be, and,
alas, in our worst moments, upon what might have been "My unhappiest
experiences," said Lord Beaconsfield, "have been those which never
happened"; and again the same acute critic of life said that half the
clever people he knew were under the impression that they were hated
and envied, the other half that they were admired and loved;--and that
neither were right!

The imaginative faculty then is a species of self-representation, the
power of considering our own life and position as from the outside;