I am well aware that this interpretation of the mental states of others is commonly described as a process of inference involving a conscious reference to our own similar experiences.  I willingly grant that it is often so.  At the same time, it must be perfectly plain that it is not always so.  It is, indeed, doubtful whether in its first stages in early life it is invariably so, for there seem to be good reasons for attributing to the infant mind a certain degree of instinctive or inherited capability in making out the looks and tones of others.[107] And, however this may be, it is certain that with the progress of life a good part of this interpretation comes to be automatic or unconscious, approximating in character to a sense-perception.  To recognize contentment in a placid smile is, one would say, hardly less immediate and intuitive than to recognize the coolness of a stream.

We must, of course, all allow that the fusion of the presentative and the representative element is, speaking generally, more complete in the case of sense-perception than in that here considered.  In spite of Berkeley’s masterly account of the rationale of visual perception as an interpretation of “visual language” and all that has confirmed it, the plain man cannot, at the moment of looking at an object, easily bring himself to admit that distance is not directly present to his vision.  On the other hand, on cool reflection, he will recognize that the complacent benevolent sentiment is distinct from the particular movements and changes in the eye and other features which express it.  Yet, while admitting this, I must contend that there is no very hard and fast line dividing the two processes, but that the reading of others’ feelings approximates in character to an act of perception.

An intuitive insight may, then, be defined as that instantaneous, automatic, or “unconscious” mode of interpreting another’s feeling which occurs whenever the feeling is fully expressed, and when its signs are sufficiently familiar to us.  This definition will include the interpretation of thoughts by means of language, though not, of course, the belief in an objective fact grounded on a recognition of another’s belief.  On the other hand, it will exclude all the more complex interpretations of looks and words which imply conscious comparison, reflection, and reasoning.  Further, it will exclude a large part of the interpretation of actions as motived, since this, though sometimes approaching the intuitive form, is for the most part a process of conjectural or doubtful inference, and wanting in the immediate assurance which belongs to an intuitive reading of a present emotion or thought.