, and to discover, from its
bloom and odour, to what branch it belonged. Such cleverness
illustrates nothing: it is an anonymous letter. Look at it ever so
long, and you cannot tell its lineage. It lives in the catalogue of
waifs and strays. On the other hand, there are men whose every
expression is characteristic, whose every idea seems to come out of a
mould. In the short sentence, or curt, careless saying of such when
laid bare, you can read their histories so far, as in the smallest
segment of a tree you can trace the markings of its rings. The first
dies, because it is shallow-rooted, and has no vitality beyond its own;
the second lives, because it is related to and fed by something higher
than itself. The famous axiom of Mrs. Glass, that in order to make
hare-soup you "must first catch your hare," has a wide significance.
In art, literature, social life, morals even, you must first catch your
man: that done, everything else follows as a matter of course. A man
may learn much; but for the most important thing of all he can find
neither teachers nor schools.

Each man is the most important thing in the world to himself; but why
is he to himself so important? Simply because he is a personality with
capacities of pleasure, of pain, who can be hurt, who can be pleased,
who can be disappointed, who labours and expects his hire, in whose
consciousness, in fact, for the time being, the whole universe lives.
He is, and everything else is relative. Confined to his own
personality, making it his tower of outlook, from which only he can
survey the outer world, he naturally enough forms a rather high
estimate of its value, of its dignity, of its intrinsic worth. This
high estimate is useful in so far as it makes his condition pleasant,
and it--or rather our proneness to form it--we are accustomed to call
vanity. Vanity--which really helps to keep the race alive--has been
treated harshly by the moralists and satirists. It does not quite
deserve the hard names it has been called. It interpenetrates
everything a man says or does, but it inter-penetrates for a useful
purpose. If it is always an alloy in the pure gold of virtue, it at
least does the service of an alloy--making the precious metal workable.
Nature gave man his powers, appetites, aspirations, and along with
these a pan of incense, which fumes from the birth of consciousness to
its decease, making the best part of life rapture, and the worst part
endura