f these the
spectator chooses as a rule the one his reason can master most
easily, or else the one reflecting most favourably on his power of
reasoning. A suicide is committed. Bad business, says the merchant.
Unrequited love, say the ladies. Sickness, says the sick man.
Crushed hopes, says the shipwrecked. But now it may be that the
motive lay in all or none of these directions. It is possible that
the one who is dead may have hid the main motive by pushing forward
another meant to place his memory in a better light.

In explanation of _Miss Julia's_ sad fate I have suggested many
factors: her mother's fundamental instincts; her father's mistaken
upbringing of the girl; her own nature, and the suggestive influence
of her fiance on a weak and degenerate brain; furthermore, and more
directly: the festive mood of the Midsummer Eve; the absence of her
father; her physical condition; her preoccupation with the animals;
the excitation of the dance; the dusk of the night; the strongly
aphrodisiacal influence of the flowers; and lastly the chance
forcing the two of them together in a secluded room, to which must
be added the aggressiveness of the excited man.

Thus I have neither been one-sidedly physiological nor one-sidedly
psychological in my procedure. Nor have I merely delivered a moral
preachment. This multiplicity of motives I regard as praiseworthy
because it is in keeping with the views of our own time. And if
others have done the same thing before me, I may boast of not being
the sole inventor of my paradoxes--as all discoveries are named.

In regard to the character-drawing I may say that I have tried to
make my figures rather "characterless," and I have done so for
reasons I shall now state.

In the course of the ages the word character has assumed many
meanings. Originally it signified probably the dominant ground-note
in the complex mass of the self, and as such it was confused with
temperament. Afterward it became the middle-class term for an
automaton, so that an individual whose nature had come to a stand
still, or who had adapted himself to a certain part in life--who
had ceased to grow, in a word--was named a character; while one
remaining in a state of development--a skilful navigator on life's
river, who did not sail with close-tied sheets, but knew when to
fall off before the wind and when to luff again--was called lacking
in character. And he was called so in a depreciatory sense, of
course, becaus