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  ...problems are not alone concerned, for in all social life we envisage fellow-creatures conceived to share the same thoughts and passions and to be similarly affected by events. What is the basis of this conviction? What are the forms it takes, and in what sense is it a part or an expression of reason?
This question is difficult, and in broaching it we cannot expect much aid from what philosophers have hitherto said on the subject. For the most part, indeed, they have said nothing, as By nature's kindly disposition most questions which it is beyond a man's power to answer do not occur to him at all.   The suggestions which have actually been made in the matter may be reduced to two: first, that we conceive other men's minds by projecting into their bodies those feelings which we immediately perceive to accompany similar operations in ourselves, that is, we infer alien minds by analogy; and second, that we are immediately aware of them and feel them to be friendly or hostile counterparts of our own thinking and effort, that is, we evoke them by dramatic imagination.
[Sidenote: Two...   Santayana, George

Excerpt from The Life of Reason · This quote is tagged Questions · Search on Google Books to find all references and sources for this quotation.

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