HISTORY VI.--E.S., physician, aged 50.
"I have some reason," he writes, "for believing that some of my
relatives (on the paternal side) were not normal in their sexual
life. But I am sure that no such suspicion was entertained by
their friends or associates; they were very reticent people. A
great proportion of my near relatives have remained unmarried or
deferred marriage until late in life. None of them have been good
business men; all seem to have been more deeply concerned in
other things than in making--or in keeping--money. They have
mostly taken little or no share in public life, and not cared
much for society. Yet they have been folk of more than average
ability, with intellectual and aesthetic interests. We are prone
to enthusiasms, but lack perseverance. We are discursive and
superficial, perhaps, but none would call us stupid. We are
perhaps abnormally self-centered and self-conscious--never cruel
or vicious. Our powers of self-control are considerable; we are
conventional people only because we are lazy and intensely
dislike any open self-assertion.
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