into the cloud of the electoral campaign, finds that the officials whom
he leaves behind, with their daily stint of work, and their hopes and
fears about their salaries, seem to him much more real than himself. The
old woman at her door in a mean street who refuses to believe that he is
not being paid for canvassing, the prosperous and good-natured tradesman
who says quite simply,' I expect you find politics rather an expensive
amusement,' all seem to stand with their feet upon the ground. However
often he assures himself that the great realities are on his side, and
that the busy people round him are concerned only with fleeting
appearances, yet the feeling constantly recurs to him that it is he
himself who is living in a world of shadows.

This feeling is increased by the fact that a candidate has constantly to
repeat the same arguments, and to stimulate in himself the same
emotions, and that mere repetition produces a distressing sense of
unreality. The preachers who have to repeat every Sunday the same
gospel, find also that 'dry times' alternate with times of exaltation.
Even among the voters the repetition of the same political thoughts is
apt to produce weariness. The main cause of the recurring swing of the
electoral pendulum seems to be that opinions which have been held with
enthusiasm become after a year or two stale and flat, and that the new
opinions seem fresh and vivid.

A treatise is indeed required from some trained psychologist on the
conditions under which our nervous system shows itself intolerant of
repeated sensations and emotions. The fact is obviously connected with
the purely physiological causes which produce giddiness, tickling,
sea-sickness, etc. But many things that are 'natural,' that is to say,
which we have constantly experienced during any considerable part of the
ages during which our nervous organisation was being developed,