As you descend from generalities to detail, it becomes more apparent
that the character in which men deal with their affairs is not fixed.
Possibly their different selves have a common stem and common
qualities, but the branches and the twigs have many forms. Nobody
confronts every situation with the same character. His character
varies in some degree through the sheer influence of time and
accumulating memory, since he is not an automaton. His character
varies, not only in time, but according to circumstance. The legend of
the solitary Englishman in the South Seas, who invariably shaves and
puts on a black tie for dinner, bears witness to his own intuitive and
civilized fear of losing the character which he has acquired. So do
diaries, and albums, and souvenirs, old letters, and old clothes, and
the love of unchanging routine testify to our sense of how hard it is
to step twice in the Heraclitan river.
There is no one self always at work. And therefore it is of great
importance in the formation of any public opinion, what self is
engaged. The Japanese ask the right to settle in California. Clearly
it makes a whole lot of difference whether you conceive the demand as
a desire to grow fruit or to marry the white man's daughter. If two
nations are disputing a piece of territory, it matters greatly whether
the people regard the negotiations as a real estate deal, an attempt
to humiliate them, or, in the excited and provocative language which
usually enclouds these arguments, as a rape.
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