If we forget a name we say the alphabet over to ourselves and pause at each letter to see if the name we want will be suggested to us.

When we receive bad news we strive to realise it by allowing successive mental associations to arise of themselves, and waiting to discover what the news will mean for us.

A poet broods with intense creative effort on the images which appear in his mind and arranges them, not in order to discover truth, but in order to attain an artistic and dramatic end.

In Prospero's great speech in _The Tempest_ the connection between the successive images--the baseless fabric of this vision--the cloud-capped towers--the gorgeous palaces--the solemn temples--the great globe itself--is, for instance, one not of inference but of reverie, heightened by creative effort, and subordinated to poetic intention.
Most of the actual inferences which we draw during any day belong, indeed, to a much humbler type of thought than do some of the higher forms of non-inferential association.

Many of our inferences, like the quasi-instinctive impulses which they accompany and modify, take place when we are making no conscious effort at all.