This, fortunately, is an exceptional case. Yet it is certain that many a man is to-day holding a position far below that for which he really has ability, simply because he is too bashful to assert himself, dreading not so much the increased responsibilities of more remunerative work as the fact that it will bring him more conspicuously and intimately into the view of other people. He feels in his soul, poor fellow, that the result will be to plunge him into unendurable confusion. It is an ordeal too great for him to face, and he clings desperately to the inferior position, which, from his distorted point of view, has the merit of allowing him to go through life unnoticed and, consequently, untroubled. What, then, is this bashfulness which exerts so widespread and baneful an influence? Whence does it take its rise? And how is its victim to go about the task of overcoming it? These are questions of vital significance, particularly in this age of complex civilisation and strenuous competition, in which the bashful man is at a tremendous disadvantage. Happily, he appreciates this, and resorts with increasing frequency to the physician's office in quest of advice and aid. As a result, far more is known about bashfulness to-day than was ever the case before, albeit in its most important aspects as yet known only to a comparatively small number of psychologically trained physicians. These physicians recognise that there are two distinct types of bashfulness, the one chronic, the other occasional, both of which represent an abnormal exaggeration of the shyness which is a normal characteristic of nearly every child, and which manifests itself in blushing, fidgeting, hiding the face, etc. Ordinarily, this organic shyness, as the psychologist Baldwin has termed it, disappears between the fifth and seventh year. But it may recur under special conditions, and it is specially likely to recur, as almost everybody knows from experience, under conditions focusing public attention on the person. Under such conditions--being called on unexpectedly to speak in public, taking part for the first time in theatrical performances, and so forth--bashfulness of the occasional type is very much in evidence, its symptoms ranging from tremor, palpitation, and vasomotor disturbances to the paralysis of "stage fright." Neither psychologically nor medically is this type of bashfulness of much importance. As the novelty of the conditions giving rise to it wears off--when, for example, one has become accustomed to public speaking--it usually disappears. Like the organic shyness of childhood, it is merely a product of inexperience, an expression of an instinctive reaction that is possibly "a far-off echo from the dim past, when fear of the unknown was a safeguard in the struggle for existence."