Herrick, Social Reaction. 121 



in harness without expecting a certain set of counter actions. 

 These may have been unpleasant reactions. When she drank 

 she expected to be shoved aside, when she pulled she expected 

 to be tweaked by her fellow. But, whatever the character of 

 these acts, they have ceased ; to the action the wonted response 

 is wanting. 



One gets this sense of hiatus in an elementary form when, 

 in climbing a ladder in the dark, a rung is discovered to be 

 missing. Again, we return to the home after sending the fam- 

 ily away on a picnic, thinking "how pleasant it will be to have 

 a quiet day in the study" and find that the unwonted quiet 

 sends us wandering through the empty house seeking we know 

 not what that has gone from our life and the working equilib- 

 rium is not soon restored. This is the "feeling of hiatus." It 

 is not confined to animate objects. The writer was once dis- 

 turbed to find that he could not work well — things were not 

 going as usual — there seemed to be a kind of mental unbalance 

 and he discovered the cause in the fact that he had forgotten to 

 put on collar and tie. This hiatus filled, the typewriter seemed 

 to have as free a play of thought as ever. Certain fussy au- 

 thors and artists have found it impossible to compose except in 

 full court dress. (I fancy a disembodied spirit would have some 

 difficulty at first with his "hiatus.") 



The infant, when passed from the arms of the nurse to 

 those of a stranger, notices the difference and shows fear or dis- 

 comfort. A strange room also disturbs the equilibrium of ex- 

 perience. The sphere of experience created by every individual 

 is normally a "continuum." When this continuum is disturbed 

 the ensphering environment is left incomplete and one has the 

 same sensation he has when the support beneath him is knocked 

 out. It is not necessary that there should be any intellectual 

 status in the intercourse. 



The above seems to be the most elementary condition of 

 social existence. It consists in the enlargement of the sphere 

 of experience by the admission of more and more elements 

 which acquire a value to my being as a part of the equilibrium 

 quite independent of any moral element in it. Its removal pro- 



