rs involves a process of leveling down. The
qualities which are present in one man, and absent in another, cannot
come into play when they meet; and the self-sacrifice which this
entails upon one of the parties, calls forth no recognition from the
other.

Consider how sordid, how stupid, in a word, how _vulgar_ most men
are, and you will see that it is impossible to talk to them without
becoming vulgar yourself for the time being. Vulgarity is in this
respect like electricity; it is easily distributed. You will then
fully appreciate the truth and propriety of the expression, _to make
yourself cheap_; and you will be glad to avoid the society of people
whose only possible point of contact with you is just that part of
your nature of which you have least reason to be proud. So you will
see that, in dealing with fools and blockheads, there is only one way
of showing your intelligence--by having nothing to do with them. That
means, of course, that when you go into society, you may now and then
feel like a good dancer who gets an invitation to a ball, and on
arriving, finds that everyone is lame:--with whom is he to dance?

SECTION 24. I feel respect for the man--and he is one in a
hundred--who, when he is waiting or sitting unoccupied, refrains from
rattling or beating time with anything that happens to be handy,--his
stick, or knife and fork, or whatever else it may be. The probability
is that he is thinking of something.

With a large number of people, it is quite evident that their power of
sight completely dominates over their power of thought; they seem to
be conscious of existence only when they are making a noise; unless
indeed they happen to be smoking, for this serves a similar end. It is
for the same reason that they never fail to be all eyes and ears for
what is going on around them.

SECTION 25. La Rochefoucauld makes the striking remark that it is
difficult to feel deep veneration and great affection for one and the
same person. If this is so, we shall have to choose whether it is
veneration or love that we want from our fellow-men.

Their love is always selfish, though in very different ways; and the
means used to gain it are not always of a kind to make us proud. A
man is loved by others mainly in the degree in which he moderates
his claim on their good feeling and intelligence: but he must act
genuinely in the matter and without dissimulation--not merely out of
forbearance, which is at bottom a kind of