There are numerous instances of the reactionary impulse in literature. Shakespeare, who was of plebeian origin, often attacked the common people in his plays. He wrote favourably of nobility, and had little sympathy with democracy. Nietzsche, who was gentle personally and suffered much pain in his life, wrote in defence of cruelty, wished to do away with pity, sought to kill the finer emotions, and thought invalids should be left to die instead of being allowed to be cured. He was creating a system in philosophy whose ruling ideas were the very opposite to those which governed his private life. He could not even witness another's pain. Professor Eucken tells a story illustrating Nietzsche's gentleness. When that philosopher of the superman orally examined a student who did not answer correctly, Nietzsche would prompt him and answer the question for him, as he was unable to witness the student's discomfiture. Burns gave us some poetic outbursts against the crime of seduction, probably because he himself was guilty of it. Thackeray, who was hopelessly in love with a married woman, Mrs. Brookfield, and was rejected by her, affected to be very cynical at disappointed lovers and ridiculed them in his _Pendennis_. Cicero, who loved glory, wrote against it. So men are often the very opposite of what they appear in their books, but this is done also unconsciously, although sometimes the effort may be deliberate. Converts are fanatics. Reformed drunkards are the most convinced prohibitionists. The severest moralists and Puritans are often former rakes. The man who rails most bitterly against a vice may often be suspected of struggling against temptation with it. Similarly, the fact that professors in exact sciences and devotees to a philosophy of materialism, often become the most ardent exponents of spiritualism, may be due to an unconscious reaction on their part. No doubt the desire to believe that the dead can still communicate with us is the real basis of this belief. It seems that scientists like Lodge, Crookes, Barrett, Wallace and Lombroso, who have done so much to spread spiritualism, should be the last persons to embrace absurd beliefs so at variance with the principles which these men profess in their scientific work. CHAPTER VII PROJECTION, VILLAIN PORTRAYALS AND CYNICISM AS WORK OF THE UNCONSCIOUS I