haracter this knowledge was is inferable from the
sudden self-consciousness that followed the partaking of it. So that if
we please we may attribute directly to Eve's indiscretion the many
evils of our morbid self-consciousness of the present day. But without
indulging in unchivalrous reflections we may draw certain morals from it
of both immediate and ultimate applicability.

To begin with, it is a most salutary warning to the introspective, and
in the second place it is a striking instance of a myth which is not
a sun myth; for it is essentially of human regard, an attempt on man's
part to explain that most peculiar attribute of his constitution,
the all-possessing sense of self. It looks certainly as if he was not
over-proud of his person that he should have deemed its recognition
occasion for the primal curse, and among early races the person is for
a good deal of the personality. What he lamented was not life but the
unavoidable exertion necessary to getting his daily bread, for the
question whether life were worth while was as futile then as now, and as
inconceivable really as 4-dimensional space.

We are then conscious of individuality as a force within ourselves. But
our knowledge by no means ends there; for we are aware of it in the case
of others as well.

About certain people there exists a subtle something which leaves its
impress indelibly upon the consciousness of all who come in contact
with them. This something is a power, but a power of so indefinable a
description that we beg definition by calling it simply the personality
of the man. It is not a matter of subsequent reasoning, but of direct
perception. We feel it. Sometimes it charms us; sometimes it repels. But
we can no more be oblivious to it than we can to the temperature of
the air. Its possessor has but to enter the room, and insensibly we are
conscious of a presence. It is as if we had suddenly been placed in the
field of a magnetic force.

On the other hand there are people who produce no effect upon us
whatever. They come and go with a like indifference. They are as
unimportant psychically as if they were any other portion of the
furniture. They never stir us. We might live with them for fifty years
and be hardly able to tell, for any influence upon ourselves, whether
they existed or not. They remind us of that neutral drab which certain
religious sects assume to show their own irrelevancy to the world. They
are often most estimable folk,