It is impossible to feign successfully what one is not, to play intentionally the part of two widely varying characters. Habits of thought and action are too controlling, too compelling. A man cannot be constantly alert. The strain on the attention is too great, and it lapses before he is aware of the change. So one is unable to be continuously mindful of what one says and does. Impostors are surprised out of their security. Though it is a wellknown method of lawyers to lead a witness peacefully along until he feels mentally comfortable, the attention meanwhile losing its edge through adaptation to the feeling of satisfaction with the answers, and then suddenly, when he is off his guard, to spring a question, the plan usually succeeds. In the more common matters of life this variation in the efficiency of attention is observed in the difficulties of conversation when one wishes to make a good impression. How often one makes remarks which one would gladly recall. The usual excuse is that we were not "ourselves." The very attempt to produce a favorable effect is disturbing. It is like walking. What does not follow automatically reveals its awkwardness. Some one has said that nothing can replace wisdom, though silence is the best substitute. But in playing a part one cannot be always silent.

The consistency of "Fiona Macleod," then, is the most important bit of evidence in establishing her claim to personality. Her interests, her feelings and emotions, her thoughts and style are too diametrically opposed to those of Sharp to permit the assumption of intentional adoption. His early topics and mode of treatment were the surface response to the demands of the reading public as he interpretated them. Dependent, as he was, upon his pen, literary criticism, for which he had taste and talent, offered the quickest and surest way of earning a living. But there was a deeper self, a personality suppressed for a time by his economic and social conditions. Had this

submerged self been less real, less vital, it might never have risen to the surface. But it was more truly himself than the austere critic that represented William Sharp. So it asserted itself and finally became the controlling force of his life. That memory, at times, seemed almost discontinuous indicates that we have here a border-line case between the common variations in the self and the condition of double personality which is so far from the line as to be called abnormal.

Returning now to the more common alterations of the self, the illustrations have disclosed startling variations in the character and purposes of the same individual. There is always rivalry and conflict between the different selves. Now one gains control, and now the other. It is not always possible to say which line of conduct most truly represents the man. In some it is the baser acts, and the nobler deeds are done with conscious purpose to maintain a social position. Fortunately, such men are rare. Most people have good intentions, and their failures are due to moral weakness influenced by social or psychological causes. Man desires, at least, a satisfying unity in his life. Every one likes to feel that he is true to his ideals; and the struggle to secure this feeling is seen in the excuses which are made for deviation from the higher code of action. Consequently, man is prone to deceive himself with the conviction that his acts are justifiable because others do them, or because they will enable him to do counterbalancing good in other ways, or else he drifts and finds excuses afterward. These by no means exhaust the categories. Man's actions are exceedingly complex, as much more complex than those of the lower animals as is his nervous system, and for just that reason.

The action of animals is usually predictable. It always is to one who knows their ways. They are severely consistent. Inconsistency, curiously enough, comes with development, at least with a certain stage of development.

Perhaps this is due to the fact that development means, among other things, multiplying ways of reacting to what is superficially the same situation. Man sees a greater number of possible reactions-more ways of behavingwith reference to external situations than do the lower animals. Primitive man, also, was consistent until he learned inconsistency from contact with his civilized teacher. The larger number of possible responses are confusing. Putting them in order requires the organization of information and moral principles, as well as insight into the effect of acts; and thinking in terms of cause and effect is a comparatively new instrument of behavior.

The man of good intentions, however, who yields to moral weakness has moments of keen remorse. But the effect is momentary. He repents and sins again. Some people have the repentance habit. They gain a certain solace and even joy from the excitement. It is a sort of emotional debauchery in which they indulge periodically, just as others drown their sorrow in drink. This is one of the ways in which the emotions ooze out ineffectually instead of producing action which is the phylogenetic justification for their existence. In time, inaction, with such people, becomes a fixed mode of behavior. They are continually making resolutions which are never carried out.

This feeling of remorse easily leads to the self-deception to which, as we have said, man is prone. He is much more naïve in this than are those who observe him. He does not know that he is practising self-deception though he may have observed this trait in others. This, again, is human-seeing quite clearly in acquaintances what one does not discover in oneself, though it may be patent to all the rest of the world. It illustrates a certain human blindness.

Finally, there should be a selection of the self to which we yield submission. "Not that I would not, if I could,"

says James, "be both handsome and fat and well dressed, and a great athlete, and make a million a year, be a wit, a bon vivant, and a lady-killer, as well as a philosopher; a philanthropist, statesman, warrior, and African explorer, as well as a 'tone-poet' and saint. But the thing is impossible. The millionaire's work would run counter to the saint's; the bon vivant and the philanthropist would trip each other up; the philosopher and the lady-killer could not well keep house in the same tenement of clay." One or the other will finally dominate. The question is, Which?

CHAPTER X

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DIGESTION

"It looks so good that it makes my mouth water" is a common saying; and it is not merely a figure of speech. The mouth actually does water at the sight of appetizing food. That is, the flow of saliva begins. Now, since the food has not been tasted the cause of this flow must be altogether different from that which stimulates secretion when food is actually eaten. Evidently, the mind is at work here, with its expectation of approaching pleasure; and this anticipation is one of the psychical contributions to digestion. Its effect, in the feeling of the mouth when appetizing food is offered, is a matter of common experience. It is not so generally known, however, that visions of pleasant eating also make the stomach "water."

As long ago as 1852 two investigators' noticed that the sight and smell of food started gastric secretion in the stomach of a hungry dog, and twenty-six years later Richet reported2 evidence of a generous flow of gastric juice in one of his patients when such substances as sugar or lemonjuice were chewed or tasted, though the act of swallowing could not be completed on account of a closed œsophagus. But the importance of these observations was not understood at the time, and the investigations were unproductive. More recently, however, a Russian physiologist, Pavlov, repeated the experiments on dogs, under improved conditions, and demonstrated the significance for digestion of the psychical factor, desire or appetite.

1 F. Bidder and C. Schmidt, Die Verdauungssäfte und der Stoffwechsel, Leipzig, 1852.

2 Journal de l'Anatomie et de la Physiologie, vol. 14, p. 170.