about intellectually, and are not shut up to the moment. But ages
before Shakespeare the fact had been observed. Homer knew all about
it, and in the last book of the Odyssey extols Halitherses, the son of
Mastor, as one "able to look before and after." [Greek text omitted.]
This is the mark of the wise man, not merely marking off person from
brute, but person from person according to the degree of personality
attained. It is characteristic of the child to show little foresight,
little hindsight. He takes the present as it comes, and lives in it.
We who are more mature and rational contemplate him with the same envy
we feel for the skylark and the mouse, and often say, "Would I too
could so suck the joys of the present, without reflecting that
something else is coming and something else is gone."



VI

Yet after becoming possessed of self-consciousness, we do not steadily
retain it. States of mind occur where the self slips out, though vivid
consciousness remains. As I sit in my chair and fix my eye on the
distance, a daydream or reverie comes over me. I see a picture,
another, another. Somebody speaks and I am recalled. "Why, here I am!
This is I." I find myself once more. I had lost myself--paradoxical
yet accurate expression. We have many such to indicate the
disappearance of self-consciousness at moments of elation. "I was
absorbed in thought," we say; the I was sucked out by strenuous
attention elsewhere. "I was swept away with grief," i.e., I vanished,
while grief held sway. "I was transported with delight," "I was
overwhelmed with shame," and--perhaps most beautiful of all these
fragments of poetic psychology,--"I was beside myself with terror," I