ad, he is dead!'
While my first self wept, my second self thought, 'How truly given was
that cry, how fine it would be at the theatre.' I was then fourteen
years old.

"This horrible duality has often given me matter for reflection. Oh,
this terrible second me, always seated whilst the other is on foot,
acting, living, suffering, bestirring itself. This second me that I
have never been able to intoxicate, to make shed tears, or put to
sleep. And how it sees into things, and how it mocks!"[87]

[87] Notes sur la Vie, p. 1.

Recent works on the psychology of character have had much to say upon
this point.[88] Some persons are born with an inner constitution which
is harmonious and well balanced from the outset. Their impulses are
consistent with one another, their will follows without trouble the
guidance of their intellect, their passions are not excessive, and
their lives are little haunted by regrets. Others are oppositely
constituted; and are so in degrees which may vary from something so
slight as to result in a merely odd or whimsical inconsistency, to a
discordancy of which the consequences may be inconvenient in the
extreme. Of the more innocent kinds of heterogeneity I find a good
example in Mrs. Annie Besant's autobiography.

[88] See, for example, F. Paulhan, in his book Les Caracteres, 1894,
who contrasts les Equilibres, les Unifies, with les Inquiets, les
Contrariants, les Incoherents, les Emiettes, as so many diverse psychic
types.

"I have ever been the queerest mixture of weakness and strength, and
have paid heavily for the weakness. As a child I used to suffer
tortures of shyness, and if my shoe-lace was untied would feel
shamefacedly that every eye was fixed on the unlucky string; as a girl
I would shrink away from strangers and think myself unwanted and
unliked, so that I was full of eager gratitude to any one who noticed
me kindly, as the young mistress of a house I was afraid of my
servants, and would let careless work pass rather than bear the pain of
reproving the ill-doer; when I have been lecturing and debating with no
lack of spirit on the platform, I have preferred to go without what I
wanted at the hotel rather than to ring and make the waiter fetch it.
Combative on the platform in defense of any cause I cared for, I shrink
from quarrel or disapproval in the house, and am a coward at heart in
private while a good fighter in public. How often have I passed
unhappy quarters