If Brown could sit down calmly to think out his bad mood, he would
realise that he was punishing the children because he was worsted in his
word battle with his wife. And _he would be quite wrong_. The truth
would be that he was punishing the children because he was at war with
himself. His early morning ugly mood betrayed a mental conflict. Hating
himself, he hated his wife; his hate evoked her hate . . . and thus the
circle was completed.

We might trace all the futilities, all the stupidities of mankind, all
the wars and crimes and injustices to man's ignorance of self. To know
all is to forgive all. Christ condemned no one because he was at peace
with himself. Yet, I suddenly remember that He whipped the
money-changers out of the Temple. This incident is comforting, for it
shows that the most lovable man who ever lived betrayed one human frailty
on one occasion at least. But now I am preaching again.

* * * * *

I went to see Charlie Chaplin in "Shoulder Arms" last night. Charlie is
an artist of high quality; for once I think as the crowd thinks. But I
leave the crowd when it comes to appreciating the "moving human dramas"
in five parts.

The cinema must be reckoned with in any educational scheme. One may
learn more about crowd psychology from attendance at cinemas than from
reading books on crowd psychology. The cinema is popular because it
encourages day-dreaming or phantasy. There are two kinds of thinking,
reality thinking and phantasy or day-dreaming. Phantasying is the easier
of the two; I can sit for hours building castles in Spain, and I never
grow tired; but if I have to sit down and think out the Theory of
Quadratics I soon become weary. In reality thinking the intellect is
active, but in day-dreaming emotion is in control. Day-dreaming gets
nowhere; the asylums are full of day-dreamers who spend their hours
constructing beautiful phantasies. In childhood phantasy is supreme.
Bobby turns the nursery into a jungle; the sofa is a tiger, the chairs
are lions, the rocking-horse is an elephant. It is all real to him. And
in later years Bobby often returns to his childish phantasying. We all
do. What young lover has not phantasied a burning mansion where his lady
love is imprisoned? Have we not all clambered up the water pipes and
rescued her from the flames?

The world of the theatre is a phantasy world. With the rising of the
curtain we forget our outside