My habitual idea of a person is a resultant of forces of memory conjoined with other forces.

Among these are to be reckoned the influence of illusory perception or insight, my own and that of others.

The amount of misinterpretation of the words and actions of a single human being during the course of a long acquaintance must be very considerable.

To these must be added the effect of erroneous single expectations and reconstructions of past experiences, in so far as these have not been distinctly contradicted and dissipated.

All these errors, connected with single acts of observing or inferring the feelings and doings of another, have their effect in distorting the subsequent total representation of the person.
Finally, we must include a more distinct ingredient of active illusion, namely, all the complex effects of the activity of imagination as led, not by fact and experience, but by feeling and desire.