CHAPTER XII.
RESULTS.
The foregoing study of illusions may not improbably have had a bewildering effect on the mind of the reader.

To keep the mental eye, like the bodily eye, for any time intently fixed on one object is apt to produce a feeling of giddiness.

And in the case of a subject like illusion, the effect is enormously increased by the disturbing character of the object looked at.

Indeed, the first feeling produced by our survey of the wide field of illusory error might be expressed pretty accurately by the despondent cry of the poet-- "Alas! it is delusion all: The future cheats us from afar, Nor can we be what we recall, Nor dare we think on what we are." It must be confessed that our study has tended to bring home to the mind the wide range of the illusory and unreal in our intellectual life.

In sense-perception, in the introspection of the mind's own feelings, in the reading of others' feelings, in memory, and finally in belief, we have found a large field for illusory cognition.