The personal idea in its more penetrating interpretations involves sympathy, in the sense of primary communication or an entering into and sharing the mind of someone else. When I converse with a man, through words, looks, or other symbols, I have more or less intelligence or _communion_ with him, we get on common ground and have similar ideas and sentiments. If one uses sympathy in this connection—and it is perhaps the most available word—one has to bear in mind that it denotes the sharing of any mental state that can be communicated, and has not the special implication of pity or other “tender emotion” that it very commonly carries in ordinary speech.[29] This emotionally colorless usage is, however, perfectly legitimate, and is, I think, more common in classical English literature than any other. Thus Shakespeare, who uses sympathy five times, if we may trust the “Shakespeare Phrase Book,” never means by it the particular emotion of compassion, but either the sharing of a mental state, as when he speaks of “sympathy in choice,” or mere resemblance, as when Iago mentions the lack of “sympathy in years, manners and beauties” between Othello and Desdemona. This latter sense is also one which must be excluded in our use of the word, since what is here meant is an active process of mental assimilation, not mere likeness. In this chapter sympathy, in the sense of communion or personal insight, will be considered chiefly with a view to showing something of its nature as a phase or member of the general life of mankind.