But first, what struggles! The “honored teacher” of his youth was Bruecke, who in his age had eyes which were “wonderfully beautiful,” yet was a terrible fellow in his prime. One morning Freud, then a demonstrator at the Physiological Institute, came late to work--and the eyes, not yet so beautiful, turned to a “terrible blue,” and before their glare the hapless demonstrator “melted away.” But Bruecke has his day; he dies. And Freud takes characteristic revenge by dreaming that he denounces him as a ghost before a group of living people with whom the deceased was presuming to mingle as an equal. It is interesting to note that “the first scientific task” at which Bruecke set him “was concerned with the nervous system of a fish--the Ammocœtes.”[57] Have we here the origin of the Freudian philosophy? It seems to me so, but perhaps this is merely because I have recently been reading Roland Pertwee’s inimitable “Fish are Such Liars,” in _The Saturday Evening Post_. 2. THE ELABORATION OF A FICTION But it is time to leave the fascinating subject of Freud the man and turn to Freud the psychologist. Everybody understands his psycho-analysis in a vague, general way, but I know of no one who has ever taken the trouble to reduce its chaos to order and so expose the kind of “logic” which rules it. His disciples merely choose such bits as please them, add a rhetorical pæan, and say, “This is Freud!” Others skip all but the salacious passages. Let us take it fairly, the lean and the fat together. After all, it is important. For if this theory be “true” we must submit to it though the heavens fall. We are not “irrational” I hope. [Illustration: DR. SIGMUND FREUD He tells us his dreams] Psycho-analysis is based upon six main assumptions, but even assumptions deserve for once to be stated in plain language. _First Assumption_: That we are born with a certain equipment, called the Primary Psychic Apparatus, or the Unconscious Mind. This is much like the “Instinctive” apparatus of McDougall, or the “Unconditioned Reflex” apparatus of Watson. It has a certain resemblance to the Old Adam of popular speech, with that Flesh which was formerly associated with the World and the Devil. It is Psyche’s house as originally bequeathed to her. “We have elaborated the fiction of a primitive psychic apparatus whose work is regulated by the efforts to avoid accumulation of excitement,” says Freud.[58] “For this reason it was constructed after the plan of a reflex apparatus. The accumulation of excitement is perceived as pain and sets the apparatus in motion in order to reproduce a feeling of gratification in which the diminution of the excitement is perceived as pleasure.”