Much the same thing occurs in language.  Our timbre of voice, our articulation, and our vocabulary, like our physiognomy, have about them something individual, and error often arises from overlooking this, and hastily reading common interpretations into exceptional cases.  The misunderstandings that arise even among the most open and confiding friends sufficiently illustrate this liability to error.

Sometimes the error becomes more palpable, as, for example, when we visit another country.  A foreign language, when heard, provokingly suggests all kinds of absurd meanings through analogies to our familiar tongue.  Thus, the Englishman who visits Germany cannot, for a time, hear a lady use the expression, “Mein Mann,” without having the amusing suggestion that the speaker is wishing to call special attention to the fact of her husband’s masculinity.  And doubtless the German who visits us derives a similar kind of amusement from such involuntary comparisons.

A fertile source of illusory insight is, of course, conscious deception on the part of others.  The rules of polite society require us to be hypocrites in a small way, and we have occasionally to affect the signs of amiability, interest, and amusement, when our actual sentiment is one of indifference, weariness, or even positive antipathy.  And in this way a good deal of petty illusion arises.  Although we may be well aware of the general untrustworthiness of this society behaviour, such is the force of association and habit, that the bland tone and flattering word irresistibly excite a momentary feeling of gratification, an effect which is made all the more easy by the co-operation of the recipient’s own wishes, touched on in the last chapter.

Among all varieties of this deception, that of the stage is the most 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.