en a little less pre-occupied with trivial and unco-ordinated
details. Good observation consists not in multiplicity of detail, but in
co-ordination of detail according to a true perspective of relative
importance, so that a finally just general impression may be reached in
the shortest possible time. The skilled observer is he who does not have
to change his mind. One has only to compare one's present adjusted
impression of an intimate friend with one's first impression of him to
perceive the astounding inadequacy of one's powers of observation. The
man as one has learnt to see him is simply not the same man who walked
into one's drawing-room on the day of introduction.

There are, by the way, three sorts of created beings who are
sentimentally supposed to be able to judge individuals at the first
glance: women, children, and dogs. By virtue of a mystic gift with which
rumour credits them, they are never mistaken. It is merely not true.
Women are constantly quite wrong in the estimates based on their
"feminine instinct"; they sometimes even admit it; and the matrimonial
courts prove it _passim_. Children are more often wrong than women. And
as for dogs, it is notorious that they are for ever being taken in by
plausible scoundrels; the perspective of dogs is grotesque. Not seldom
have I grimly watched the gradual disillusion of deceived dogs.
Nevertheless, the sentimental legend of the infallibility of women,
children, and dogs, will persist in Anglo-Saxon countries.

III

One is curious about one's fellow-creatures: therefore one watches them.
And generally the more intelligent one is, the more curious one is, and
the more one observes. The mere satisfaction of this curiosity is in
itself a worthy end, and would alone justify the business of
systematised observation. But the aim of observation may, and should, be
expressed in terms more grandiose. Human curiosity counts among the
highest social virtues (as indifference counts among the basest
defects), because it leads to the disclosure of the causes of character
and temperament and thereby to a better understanding of the springs of
human conduct. Observation is not practised directly with this high end
in view (save by prigs and other futile souls); nevertheless it is a
moral act and must inevitably promote kindliness--whether we like it or
not. It also sharpens the sense of beauty. An ugly deed--such as a deed
of cruelty--takes on artistic beauty when its