TheCompleteMemoirsOfGeorgeSherston

to their normal respectability, looked somehow as
though it might have belonged to Doctor Macamble,

III

I HAVE PREVIOUSLY remarked that I would give a
good deal for a few gramophone records of my
"interchanges of ideas" with Rivers. I now reiterate
the remark because at the moment of writing I feel
very much afraid of reporting our confabulations in-
correctly. In later years, while muddling on toward
maturity, I have made it my business to find out all
I can about the mechanism of my spontaneous be-
haviour; but I cannot be sure how far I had advanced
in that art—or science—in 1917. I can only suggest
that my definite approach to mental maturity began
with my contact with the mind of Rivers.

If he were alive I could not be writing so freely
about him. I might even be obliged to call him by
some made-up name, which would seem absurd. But
he has been dead nearly fourteen years now and he
exists only in vigilant and undiminished memories,
continuously surviving in what he taught me. It is
that intense survival of his human integrity which has
made me pause perplexed. Can I hope to pass the
test of that invisible presence, that mind which was
devoted to the service of exact and organized re-
search? What exactitude would he find in such a re-
presentation of psychological experience as this, and
how far would he approve my attempt to describe
him? Well, I can only trust that he would smile at
my mistakes and decide that I am tolerably accurate
about the essentials of the story.

Of one thing, at any rate, I can be certain.
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