o
perception and introspection becomes pretty plain. On the one hand, it
closely resembles sense-perception, since it proceeds by the
interpretation of a sense-impression by means of a representative image.
On the other hand, it differs from sense-perception, and is more closely
allied to introspection in the fact that, while the process of
interpretation in the former case is a reconstruction of _external_
experiences, in the latter case it is a reconstruction of _internal_
experiences. To intuit another's feeling is clearly to represent to
ourselves a certain kind of internal experience previously known, in its
elements at least, by introspection, while these represented experiences
are distinctly referred to another personality.

And now we see what constitutes the object of insight. This is, in part,
a common experience, as in the case of sense-perception and aesthetic
intuition, since to perceive another's feeling is implicitly to cognize
the external conditions of a common insight. But this is clearly not the
whole, nor even the main part of objective reality in this act of
cognition. An intuitive insight differs from a sense-perception in that
it involves an immediate assurance of the existence of a feeling
presentatively known, though not to our own minds. The object in insight
is thus a presentative feeling as in introspection, though not our own,
but another's. And so it differs from the object in sense-perception in
so far as this last involves sense-experiences, as muscular and tactual
feelings, which are not _at the moment_ presentatively known to any
mind.

_Illusions of Insight._

And now we are in a position, perhaps, to define an illusion of insight,
and to inquire whether there is anything answering to our definition. An
illusory insight is a quasi-intuition of another's feelings which does
not answer to the internal reality as presentatively known to the
subject himself. In spite of the errors of introspection dealt with in
the last chapter, nobody will doubt that, when it is a question between
a man's knowing what is at the moment in his own mind and somebody
else's knowing, logic, as well as politeness, requires us to give
precedence to the former.

An illusion of insight, like the other varieties of illusion already
dealt with, may arise either by way of wrong suggestion or by way of a
warping preconception. Let us look at each of these sources apart.

Our insights, like our perceptions, th