ABSTRACT
The Roman people perpetuated the memory of the 'Mother of the Gracchi' in a bronze statue. It may certainly be considered an audacity if the author venture, after more than two thousand years, to offer a new suggestion towards the understanding of Cornelia's character. There exist to-day women of the noble Cornelia's type, women who, themselves retiring, modest, often somewhat austere, parade their children really as other women do their jewels; it also happens that such women develop a psycho-neurosis, and then the psychiatrist has the opportunity of analyzing this trait of character too. It was therefore very much to the point that Cornelia should draw her fellow-women citizens' attention to the unnatural character of their worship of this symbol, and should direct them by her own example to more natural love-objects. In an essay entitled ‘The Analysis of Comparisons’ the author declared that comparisons thrown out carelessly in course of conversation often contain far-reaching conceptions derived from the unconscious.
