a combination of circumstances, but it had a soul, a very elementary one, hardly distinguishable from the intention apparently manifested by circumstances. It followed me in my wild gallop, mischievously watching to see how I should manage. And my. one idea was to show it what I could do. If I felt no fear, it was precisely because my whole mind was centred on this one idea; and also, perhaps, because the malice of my strange companion did not preclude ^"certain good fellowship. I have often thought of this little incident, and said to myself that nature could not have conceived any better psychical mechanism than this, if she intended, while endowing us with fear as a salutary emotion, to preserve us from it in cases where we had best not give way to it. I have just cited a case where the "good fellowship" nature of the Accident is the most striking thing about it. Here is another case, which perhaps brings out more distinctly still its unity, its individuality, the clearness with which it carves itself out a place in the continuity of the real. While still a boy, in 1871, on the morrow of the Franco-Prussian War, I had, like all people of my generation, considered another war to be imminent during the twelve or fifteen years that followed. Later on that war appeared as at once probable and impos- sible: a complex and contradictory idea, which lasted right i 3 4 STATIC RELIGION CH. down to