To give an illustration of the permanent causes, it is well known that a conceited man will be disposed to attribute admiration of himself to others. On the other hand, a shy, timid person will be prone to read into other minds the opposite kind of feeling. Coming to temporary forces, we find that any expectation to meet with a particular kind of mental trait in a new acquaintance will dispose the observer hastily and erroneously to attribute corresponding feelings to the person. And if this expectation springs out of a present feeling, the bias to illusory insight is still more powerful. For example, a child that fears its parent's displeasure will be prone to misinterpret the parent's words and actions, colouring them according to its fears. So an angry man, strongly desirous of making out that a person has injured him, will be disposed to see signs of conscious guilt in this person's looks or words. Similarly, a lover will read fine thoughts or sentiments into the mind of his mistress under the influence of a strong wish to admire. And what applies to the illusory interpretation of others' feelings applies to the ascription of feelings to inanimate objects. This is due not simply to the impulse to expand one's conscious existence through far-reaching resonances of sympathy, but also to a permanent or temporary disposition to attribute a certain kind of feeling to an object. Thus, the poet personifies nature in part because his emotional cravings prompt him to construct the idea of something that can be admired or worshipped. Once more, the action of a momentary feeling when actually excited is seen in the "mechanical" impulse of a man to retaliate when he strikes his foot against an object, as a chair, which clearly involves a tendency to attribute an intention to hurt to the unoffending body, and the _rationale_ of which odd procedure is pretty correctly expressed in the popular phrase: "It relieves the feelings." It is worth noting, perhaps, that these illusions of insight, like those of perception, may involve an inattention to the actual impression of the moment. To erroneously attribute a feeling to another through an excess of sympathetic eagerness is often to overlook what a perfectly dispassionate observer would see, as, for example, the immobility of the features or the signs of a deliberate effort to simulate. This inattention will, it is obvious, be greatest in the poetic attribution of life and personality to natural objects, in so far as this approximates to a complete momentary illusion. To see a dark overhanging rock as a grim sombre human presence, is for the moment to view it under this aspect only, abstracting from its many obvious unlikenesses.