Page:The Yellow Book - 05.djvu/31

Rh my true opinions. In fact, I thought at the time that I had never acted under the influence of a motive so clearly visible along its whole course from Thought to Will, and so manifestly free from any the smallest fibre of impulse having its origin in the subliminal consciousness. Yet now I am beginning to doubt.

"June 24.—On a closer examination I feel that my motive was not, as I then thought, compounded equally of a legitimate desire to vindicate my own intelligence and of a praiseworthy anxiety not to add to my aunt's spiritual perplexities, but that it was subtly tainted with an illegitimate longing to continue my study of her curious case. Consequently, I cannot now assure myself that if I had not known that further concealment of my opinions would arrest my aunt's confidences and thus deprive me of a keen psychological pleasure (which I have no right to enjoy at her expense) the legitimate inducements to candour that were presented to me would of themselves have prevailed."

There is much more of the same kind; but I will cut it short at this point, not only to escape a headache, but to ask any impartial reader into whose hands this apology may fall, whether, I—who as I said before am not only John Johnson by name but by nature—am a fit and proper person to edit the posthumous papers of Basil Fillimer.

I come now, however, to what I consider my strongest justification for declining this literary trust. Though I had, and indeed still retain, the highest admiration for Basil Fillimer's intellectual subtlety, and though, confessing myself absolutely unable to follow him into his refinements of analysis, I hazard this opinion with diffidence, I do not think that, except in their curiosity as infinitely delicate and minute mental processes, his speculations are of any value to the world. I have formed this opinion in my rough-and-ready way from a variety of Rh