REACTION

Georges Gurdijieff, on natural man:

Each man has a definite repertoire of roles which he plays in ordinary circumstances. But put him into even only slightly different circumstances and he is unable to find a suitable role. For a short time, he becomes himself.

P.D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich).

Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is. If there are rats in a cellar, you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats; it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way, the suddenness of the provocation does not make me ill-tempered; it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am. 

C.S. Lewis.