mean much more than that. I mean that one has
one's self no mental picture corresponding to the mental picture which
one's personality leaves in the minds of one's friends. Has it ever
struck you that there is a mysterious individual going around, walking
the streets, calling at houses for tea, chatting, laughing, grumbling,
arguing, and that all your friends know him and have long since added
him up and come to a definite conclusion about him--without saying
more than a chance, cautious word to you; and that that person is
_you_? Supposing that _you_ came into a drawing-room where you were
having tea, do you think you would recognize yourself as an
individuality? I think not. You would be apt to say to yourself, as
guests do when disturbed in drawing-rooms by other guests: "Who's this
chap? Seems rather queer, I hope he won't be a bore." And your first
telling would be slightly hostile. Why, even when you meet yourself in
an unsuspected mirror in the very clothes that you have put on that
very day and that you know by heart, you are almost always shocked by
the realization that you are you. And now and then, when you have gone
to the glass to arrange your hair in the full sobriety of early
morning, have you not looked on an absolute stranger, and has not that
stranger piqued your curiosity? And if it is thus with precise
external details of form, colour, and movement, what may it not be
with the vague complex effect of the mental and moral individuality?

A man honestly tries to make a good impression. What is the result?
The result merely is that his friends, in the privacy of their minds,
set him down as a man who tries to make a good impression. If much
depends on the result of a single interview, or a couple of
interviews, a man may conceivably force another to accept an
impression of himself which he would like to convey. But if the
receiver of the impression is to have time at his disposal, then the
giver of the impression may just as well sit down and put his hands in
his pockets, for nothing that he can do will modify or influence in
any way the impression that he will ultimately give. The real impress
is, in the end, given unconsciously, not consciously; and further, it
is received unconsciously, not consciously. It depends partly on both
persons. And it is immutably fixed beforehand. There can be no final
deception. Take the extreme case, that of the mother and her son. One
hears that the son hoodwinks his m