Symbol of the Trench-knife.

Those who have grasped the significance of the House and its architecture as outlined in the first part of this essay, will scarce need explanation of the symbol of the Trench-knife and its importance to the play. It is bound up in more senses than one with the figure of the returning soldier-the prodigal son Harry, who therewith redeems his own reputation, by finding rest and salvation for his mother in another world. We might only pause to reflect how the "young shaver" has become the "old blade" as Mr Morland expresses it: and like the "unholy organ visiting the island" in its "call" to Mary Rose in years rolled by: this "fearsome weapon," his blade, is his own "visiting card." "I have a call to make" too, he says, and that which 'raked the bushes for her,' is now a smoking pipe; a lighted candle or a 'clasp knife' of the trench hurled through the dark passage "for her if she can get it" and "to give the old girl a chance." And, it is "out of its light," that Mary Rose as a spirit "is made."

THE UNCONSCIOUS INCONGRUITIES.

No running commentary on the play, no annotated version or even compendium of its contents, could really do justice to its curious details. or adequately explain its passing incongruities. We have no pretensions of making the attempt but prefer to leave them unexplained, the better to preserve some mysteries by the way, as the narrative unfolds itself; hoping against hope that the clue slumbers with the author. How, for example, can we really grasp why, in his tender conversation with Mary Rose concerning her island visit, Harry should blurt out,

"As if in a way there were two kinds of dogs out hunting you, the good and the bad." What does it mean? Frankly we do not know; and only plead with Mary Rose, "Please don't be cross with me." It will possibly be suggested that the rival elements stand for him who "still hunts with the hounds"...and him who is described as "the puppy" and the "sea-dog." Both are clamouring for Mary Rose, on the island when the call comes:the father who cannot part with her image and tries to withdraw her from memory unto himself:-the son who tries to remember and keep her back in the world of consciousness. They are actually symbolised in the rival voices on the Island-the good and the bad, heard in Act II. Thus one is "soft and furtive" growing into "a storm and whistling winds, increasing in volume till the mere loudness is horrible"..."They are not without an opponent," says the play. That is the voice of the

other, "also calling her name," and from it issues "...An earthly sweetness that is seeking to beat them back and put a girdle of safety round her." But which is the good and which the bad it is impossible to say; suffice it that "the good dogs have got her," but she is too tired of men (too "dog-tired") to care: or as Morland says "Sleeping dogs" of the island (are best left lie).

Then there is "the little old woman on the stair" (Act I b) who first told Mary of her island. Who is she? As we shall learn from Mrs Otery later (III b) that Mary Rose meets her on the stairs and talks to her, it seems a dramatic prevision of the ghost-life to come. Or is it merely a dream-touch of Harry who brings back that real "gaunt little figure" he had spoken to but five minutes before. As he reminds Mary later as I was sitting by the fire alone I seemed to hear you as you once were... but as to its certain meaning we are still in the dark.

It may be asked, "Why must the hurling of a butter dish indicate the annunciation to Mary that she is with child?" Does it mean "the breast is now filled with milk" or a babe is being moulded for her out of butter (a not uncommon child's fancy)? Mary of the Paradise of Promise is "flowing with milk and honey"...just as the Scriptures speak of the creation of the infant embryo: "Hast thou not poured me out as milk, and curdled me like cheese?... Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh"...etc. (Job x. 10). We do not know.

Why is the son-in-law Simon Sobersides to the island, when he is Morland and Blake to us? It is Mary Rose's pet name for him, a delicate compliment to his gallantry: but really a 'portmanteau word' (as Carroll calls it) compound of many origins. Sober-sides: and he prides himself on his sobriety. "It's a wonder I never took to drink." Of sober temperament in life too; controlling himself like young Cameron to a remarkable degree, when he could split his sides with laughter (sober-sides). His first introduction to us is as a youth in a fit of laughter even as it is with 'Cameron'-"I will finish my laugh." Further the Sober-sides denote his stern front, "a face that could be stern to harshness," and a reminder that he is of the "Iron-sides," Cromwell's distinguished fighters: this is more evident when we see that his name is Simon Blake whose namesake, again of Cromwell's day (indeed Blake and Cromwell were born in the same year), Mary Rose hopes is reborn in her lieutenant; and that in this way "the loveliest" of armies and navies of England are worthily embodied in Lieutenant Simon Sobersides, to whom she alone is a "senior officer."

Why...but they are too many, they come crowding upon us; the

'whys' are best reserved for the more learned, the doctors and the wise. They will probably say of it all "It never happened."..."You can believe that too if you like!"

CONCLUSIONS.

Thus much for our better understanding of the play, for our understanding of Barrie. When we have said this, we have said all.... His style, at once so intimate and absorbing, only serves to bring him, in every play he presents us, one step further in his self-revelation; and for our part, to carry us one stage further in devotion to his master mind. Old characters speak again, we pick up a score of lost threads. What need to be reminded how Mary or Mar is the poet's Margaret, the dream-child of old, the might-have-been of Dear Brutus (“It might-havebeen Mary Rose") the daughter no less than the mother? How significant and characteristic of him to gloss over the cannonade of war in one instantaneous block-out, that separates the last return of Mary Rose and Harry's awakening; in reality a space of five whole years ("If this War does come"..."the War lately ended"). Have we not seen Harry before? Is he not the boorish private in The Old Lady shows her Medals? For at this stage it is scarcely necessary to point out that both he and Simon are adopted sons in the play.

One fact must surely emerge from the study of Mary Rose, and one of which we feel the author is consciously unaware, and that is the hopeless barrenness of every character in the play. Thence comes the brave attempt to redeem its sombre pathetic truth with the sparkle of the manifest story, and the glowing feast of light and life that is the dreamlyric of Mary Rose. In evident support of the first, we may view Simon "who never married (again)": Cameron who "will remain a bachelor until..." and does so; Harry the unattached; Mr Amy with his childless, 'whiskery,' wife, and Morland true to his name. This too can find explanation, but it is idle to dwell on it; except perhaps to point out— and those who follow the chronology and hints of the play will see it for themselves, for space forbids our reasons-how old Amy, old Cameron and old Morland on the one hand, are but images of one and the same figure; and that Simon, Harry, and young Morland on the other, are further composite figure this time of Youth. The "two (are) living in a very small room, together"..."father and son." Both groups are longing for the hand of Mary Rose-a creature who is the perfection ideal of their dream-an unreal phantasy that cannot be a woman that cannot be either's.

Med. Psych. VI

14

But as we cast a last long lingering look behind, on our fading Eurydice, we realise that that sad character is there to give us consolation in the knowledge "that hope keeps breaking through," and in the feeling of which she provides the living evidence that those we loved of yesterday and whose memories we cherish, grow younger ever younger as we grow old; and our love for some Elder's image at the first is still fostered unchanged as we advance, even kindly rejuvenated somewhere while we sleep. Until in after years, we, the ageing turn back to glance at it, to find it is the image of a child!

THE REABSORBED AFFECT AND ITS

ELIMINATION1

BY TRIGANT BURROW, M.D., Ph.D.

OUR definitions are necessarily just as loose as the concepts for which they stand. They have their day and then fade again along with other transient things. The same definition or concept may even vary with the earth's latitude. The God of the Hindus is quite a different personification from that of the Christian deity. A Democrat possesses one signification above the Mason and Dixon Line and quite another below it. A 'gentleman' remains to this day an indeterminate evaluation and 'ladies' are equally nondescript. The reason is that our social designations are dependent upon our personal affects and must vary infinitely with the infinite variety of these emotional tones.

To define the affect then would be no less ambitious a task than to seek in the emotional sphere for the mathematical symbol of infinity. As affects must vary with the individual affected, we can perhaps approach no closer to an exact definition of an affect than to say that it is an emotion or reaction that is personally coloured. But this still leaves us with such vague generalities as 'personally' and 'coloured,' so that 'personally coloured affects' leaves us in as confused a chaos of indefiniteness as that with which we set out. In the midst then of this amorphous mass of ephemeral and changing meanings I can discover no fixed point upon which to set the compass of annotation. In the midst of these etymologically imprecise fields one's mind gropes aimlessly in its search of orientation. It seems to me, therefore, that amid this welter of signals that makes up our changing code the only possible security which we can seize and hold to is our momentary understanding with each other. Let us then quit the etymologists, the logicians, the philosophers and all the learned ways of the Academies and return to the very simplest and earliest of biological formulations—the formulation, namely, constituting the earliest and most primary of human relationships-the relationship designated under the formula 'you and me.' For if we are to reconstruct in conscious terms the complex equations that represent

1 Paper read at the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the American Psychopathological Association, New York City, June 11, 1926.