ost
complete. The actor is a man who has elaborately trained himself in the
simulation of certain feelings. And when his acting is of the best
quality, and the proper bodily attitude, gesture, tone of voice, and so
on, are hit off, the force of the illusion completely masters us. For
the moment we lose sight of the theatrical surroundings, and see the
actor as really carried away by the passion which he so closely
imitates. Histrionic illusion is as complete as any artistic variety can
venture to be.[108]

I have said that our insights are limited by our own mental experience,
and so by introspection. In truth, every interpretation of another's
look and word is determined ultimately, not by what we have previously
observed in others, but by what we have personally felt, or at least
have in a sense made our own by intense sympathy. Hence we may, in
general, regard an illusion of insight on the active side as a hasty
projection of our own feelings, thoughts, etc., into other minds.

We habitually approach others with a predisposition to attribute to them
our own modes of thinking and feeling. And this predisposition will be
the more powerful, the more desirous we are for sympathy, and for that
confirmation of our own views which the reflection of another mind
affords. Thus, when making a new acquaintance, people are in general
disposed to project too much of themselves into the person who is the
object of inspection. They intuitively endow him with their own ideas,
ways of looking at things, prejudices of sentiment, and so on, and
receive something like a shock when later on they find out how different
he is from this first hastily formed and largely performed image.

The same thing occurs in the reading of literature, and the appreciation
of the arts of expression generally. We usually approach an author with
a predisposition to read our own habits of thought and sentiment into
his words. It is probably a characteristic defect of a good deal of
current criticism of remote writers to attribute to them too much of our
modern conceptions and aims. Similarly, we often import our own special
feelings into the utterances of the poet and of the musical composer.
That much of this intuition is illusory, may be seen by a little
attention to the "intuitions" of different critics. Two readers of
unlike emotional organization will find incompatible modes of feeling in
the same poet. And everybody knows how common it is for musical