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122 The Point of Viewof a broken bubble. The friend who, wheneverI appear out of sorts, wishes to sweepmy temperament into the hospital, whosends me a box of flowers, or suggests that Itake a vacation, deserves no more affectionthan a thermometer.If my ill-temper is to be credited tofatigue-toxins, what shall we say of my usualsweetness of disposition ? Is that also to besubtracted from the sum of virtues that Ihabitually regard as my true self? Innovels as well as in real life I find some indicationsthat wives are accustomed toanalyze their husbands according to such amechanistic theory. They present theirmilliners' bills, we understand, after an uncommonlygood dinner; and they show adisposition to wrap an irritable spouse insublimated liniment, or to send him off for agame of golf. But the clever wife undoubtedlydisguises her prophylactic measures,and suppresses the retort that would reducea husband's soul to the level of an unlubricatedmotor.My broad-minded friend calls herselfsympathetic. But her sympathy, whichshe defines as " an understanding of the conditionsfrom which difficulties arise," alwaysseems a little insulting. Like phylacteriesand other amulets, which must sometimeshave been more troublesome than the evileye itself, this so-called "understanding"may become the most obnoxious of safeguards.What we want from our earthlycompanions is fellow-feeling, with all tracesof omniscience left out.Even this fellow-feeling has its dangers.The woman who spilled half her coffee in onenervous jerk, at breakfast, when her husbanddropped an egg which he was holdingaloft by way of explaining an opinion, illustratedonly too well the evils of the sympatheticstrike. This time, it was the coffee,not the deftly rescued egg, which spoiled theappearance of the breakfast-table. Anotherkind of sympathy has the efficacy of soothingsyrup, and has also its dangerous narcoticpower. But sympathy of an unsophisticatedkind may claim, after all, its chanceto maintain the dignity of human nature.It remains as true now as it has alwaysbeen in the past, that the dignity of humannature must be buttressed from without ifits inner vaulting is to hold itself intact.We must be believed in; we demand bothof God and of our fellow men the respectthat is accorded to a soul as distinguishedfrom a machine. Most of all we demandfrom ourselves some saving grace of deferencetoward the personality that moveswithin us.The superstition with which people onceknelt before the shrine of a saint remainsalive, although the fashion of our beliefs hasadvanced, as Bernard Shaw reminds us,from the idea of seven deadly sins and sevenchampions of Christendom, to a preoccupationwith nothing less numerous than amillion of microbes. "Sevens and angelsare out of fashion, and billions and streptococciare all the rage." If nowadays oursuperstitions carry us to the sanitarium, wemay fail there to learn various truths aboutlife that were entirely familiar to the saintof the elder day. They are indefinite matters,perhaps, and not easily scheduled;but they tend to simplify the personalproblem by giving it more meaning ratherthan less. There is such a thing as killinghuman aspirations with a germicide.And so, while I meekly follow the adviceof my strong-minded friend, and betakemyself to a rest-cure, I do still maintain thatthe man or the woman who accepts the retortprophylactic as an ultimatum, is securingpeace without honor.SOMETIMES I think that the subconsciouswas discovered just at the momentwhen the human spirit revoltedagainst the modern habit of explaining allits reactions by reference to a manual of hygiene.But the subconscious self is nolonger a dark and unexplored caveof the winds. We have alreadyreached the point of introducingpublicity into its recesses, as a cure forhalf its dangers; and if it still has morethe manner of a munition-factory than ofthe safe-deposit vault for which it has alwaysbeen used by reticent people, thepsychiatrists are working hard to equip itwith the most effective safety appliancesthat can be provided for explosive situations.Conscience andthe SubconsciousThe dentist tells me that his patients aredivided into two classes: those who howland those who wince. He prefers those whohowl. The wincing people are probablythose who are inclined to tuck unpleasantexperiences away into subconsciousness;they are old-fashioned enough to regard