Any attempt to answer this question must take his own methodological cue and review the ‘context of situation’ in which found himself when he wrote that final entry. Five weeks earlier news had reached him, after an interval of several months, of the death in distant Cracow of his beloved mother. He was wracked by grief and guilt; he fell into ‘a state of metaphysical instability’ in which he felt ‘cut adrift’ from all life around him. A few weeks later he received another blow in the form of a letter from Nina Stirling, his erstwhile sweetheart and muse in Adelaide, whom he had been stringing along for more than a year, having lacked the moral courage to tell her that he was now in love with Elsie Masson, the woman he proposed to marry. Inevitably, Nina had discovered his deception and wrote to terminate their ‘friendship’. His ‘damnable lack of character’ had been exposed. ‘I feel an absolute brute & unworthy of anyone’s friendship, not to speak of love,’ he wrote to Elsie. Both young women were daughters of eminent scientists with knighthoods, and Malinowski had managed the love triangle so badly that he feared the scandal would ruin his career. His remorse over Nina compounded his remorse over his mother. He regressed. ‘At night, sad, plaintive dreams, like childhood feelings…. Everything permeated with Mother.’