The contrast is likewise one of opposition, sometimes to bitterness, when the individual seeks to impose his own opinions or his own personality forcibly on others. A Mohammed, fired with the zeal of a religious enthusiasm, may spread his doctrine by fire and sword and be resisted by similar violence. Others than the Germans have betaken themselves to arms to spread a specific and arbitrary type of life. On a small scale it is seen wherever a fanatical parent tries to force his own belief and type of life upon his children, reared in a younger and freer generation. In contemporary society most individuals are neither tempted nor permitted to coerce people to their own way of thinking, although economic pressure and social ostracism are still powerful instruments by which strategically situated individuals can force their own opinions or types of life upon others. TYPES OF SELF. The consciousness of self varies in its expression and intensity and at different times may display different types or combinations of types. No one is ever utterly consistent, and different situations, different groups, provoke different selves in us. Nobody writes quite the same kind of letter to his different friends, or is, as has been pointed out, the same person in different situations. But, except for those intellectual will-o'-the-wisps, or moral ne'er-do-wells who take on the color of every new circumstance in which they happen to be cast, men do develop predominantly one type of self which constitutes, in familiar language, their character. The manner of our consciousness of our personality may vary in quality, even though it be intense in degree. One may be aware even of one's importance, without being "self-important." One may be quite conscious of one's significance in the world and yet not be "self-conscious." It is indeed usually the little man who has a great air about him. The officiousness and pettiness of the small soul invested with authority has often been commented on. Proverbial wisdom has succinctly recorded the fact that empty barrels make the most noise. Latterly, Freudian psychology has pointed out the mechanisms by which insignificant people compensate for the poverty of their person by bluster and brag.[1] [Footnote 1: On this point see an illuminating brief discussion by Hart in _The Psychology of Insanity_.]