106 LIFE AND HABIT. 



pigs, or are run away with by a restive horse, or 

 are attacked by a savage animal which masters them. 

 It is absurd to say that a person is a single " ego " 

 when he is in the clutches of a lion. Even when we 

 are alone, and uninfluenced by other people except 

 in so far as we remember their wishes, we yet 

 generally conform to the usages which the current 

 feeling of our peers has taught us to respect; their 

 will having so mastered our original nature, that, do 

 what we may, we can never again separate ourselves 

 and dwell in the isolation of our own single person- 

 ality. And even though we succeeded in this, and 

 made a clean sweep of every mental influence which 

 had ever been brought to bear upon us, and though at 

 the same time we were alone in some desert where 

 there was neither beast nor bird to attract our attention 

 or in any way influence our action, yet we could not 

 escape the parasites which abound within us ; whose 

 action, as every medical man well knows, is often 

 such as to drive men to the commission of grave 

 crimes, or to throw them into convulsions, make 

 lunatics of them, kill them — when but for the existence 

 and course of conduct pursued by these parasites they 

 would have done no wrong to any man. 



These parasites — are they part of us or no ? Some 

 are plainly not so in any strict sense of the word, yet 

 their action may, in cases which it is unnecessary to 

 detail, affect us so powerfully that we are irresistibly 

 impelled to act in such or such a manner ; and yet we 

 are as wholly unconscious of any impulse outside of our 

 own " ego " as though they were part of ourselves ; 



