Personally I find myself often doing it. I could on the spur of the moment write as many as twenty names of people of whom I am accustomed to speak ill without really knowing much about them. I make it an excuse that they are in the public eye, that I don't like their politics, or their social opinions, or their literary output, or the things they do on the stage. Anything will serve so long as it gives me the opportunity to hurl my assegai as I see them pass. One does it instinctively, viciously, because like other semi-savages one is undeveloped mentally, and it is to be expected. By expecting it from others half our resentment is forestalled. Knowing that from a race such as ours we shall not get anything else we learn to take it philosophically. If I hurl my assegai at another, another hurls his assegai at me, and in a measure we are quits. Even if, trying to rise above my inborn savagery, I withhold my assegai, it is no sign that another will withhold his, and I may be wounded even in the effort to do my best. Very well; that, too, is to be expected and must be taken manfully. The learning to take it manfully is what as individuals we get out of it. For the most part we are soft at heart, soft, I mean, not in the sense of being tender, but in that of being flabby. On myself this was borne in less than a year ago. I had for some months been working hard at a picture-play which when put before the public was largely misunderstood. While some of the papers praised it others criticised it severely, but whether they praised or blamed I was seen as "teaching a lesson," a presumption from which I shrink. It is not that there is any harm in teaching a lesson if a man is qualified, but I no longer consider myself qualified. Sharing ideas is one thing, and the highest pleasure of the reason; but the assumption that because you suggest an idea you seek to convert is quite another thing. If I failed to make it plain that in this present book I was merely offering ideas for inspection, and in the hope of getting others in return, I should put it in the fire. My picture-play once handed over to the public I experienced an intense reaction of depression. To figure through the country, wherever there are screens, as "teaching a lesson" seemed more than I could bear. It _was_ more than I could bear, till it flashed on me that I couldn't bear it merely because I was inwardly flabby. I was not taking the experience manfully. I was not standing up to it, nor getting from it that toughening of the inner fibre which it had to yield. As usual in my case, owing to an acquaintance with the Bible imparted to me in childhood, a suggestion from the Bible was that which righted me again toward cheerfulness. It came, as such things always do, without any seeking, or other operation beyond that of the subconscious self. _Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ._[24] [24] St Paul's Second Epistle to Timothy.