breakfast, he very much wants to know where his boots are, and he has
the usually sinister preoccupations about health and finance. Whatever
the force of his egoism, he must more or less harmonise his
individuality with those of his wife and children. Having laid down the
law, or accepted it, he sets forth to his daily duties, just a fraction
of a minute late. He arrives at his office, resumes life with his
colleagues sympathetic and antipathetic, and then leaves the office for
an expedition extending over several hours. In the course of his
expedition he encounters the corpse of a young dog run down by a
motor-bus. Now you also have encountered that corpse and are gazing at
it; and what do you say to yourself when he comes along? You say: "Oh!
Here's a policeman." For he happens to be a policeman. You stare at him,
and you never see anything but a policeman--an indivisible phenomenon of
blue cloth, steel buttons, flesh resembling a face, and a helmet; "a
stalwart guardian of the law"; to you little more human than an
algebraic symbol: in a word--a policeman.

Only, that word actually conveys almost nothing to you of the reality
which it stands for. You are satisfied with it as you are satisfied with
the description of a disease. A friend tells you his eyesight is
failing. You sympathise. "What is it?" you ask. "Glaucoma." "Ah!
Glaucoma!" You don't know what glaucoma is. You are no wiser than you
were before. But you are content. A name has contented you. Similarly
the name of policeman contents you, seems to absolve you from further
curiosity as to the phenomenon. You have looked at tens of thousands of
policemen, and perhaps never seen the hundredth part of the reality of a
single one. Your imagination has not truly worked on the phenomenon.

There may be some excuse for not seeing the reality of a policeman,
because a uniform is always a thick veil. But you--I mean you, I, any