ble. But for vanity the race would have died out long ago.
There are some men whose lives seem to us as undesirable as the lives
of toads or serpents; yet these men breathe in tolerable content and
satisfaction. If a man could hear all that his fellows say of
him--that he is stupid, that he is henpecked, that he will be in the
_Gazette_ in a week, that his brain is softening, that he has said all
his best things--and if he could believe that these pleasant things are
true, he would be in his grave before the month was out. Happily no
man does hear these things; and if he did, they would only provoke
inextinguishable wrath or inextinguishable laughter. A man receives
the shocks of life on the buffer of his vanity. Vanity acts as his
second and bottleholder in the world's prize-ring, and it fights him
well, bringing him smilingly up to time after the fiercest knock-down
blows. Vanity is to a man what the oily secretion is to a bird, with
which it sleeks and adjusts the plumage ruffled by whatever causes.
Vanity is not only instrumental in keeping a man alive and in heart,
but, in its lighter manifestations, it is the great sweetener of social
existence. It is the creator of dress and fashion; it is the inventor
of forms and ceremonies, to it we are indebted for all our traditions
of civility. For vanity in its idler moments is benevolent, is as
willing to give pleasure as to take it, and accepts as sufficient
reward for its services a kind word or an approving smile. It delights
to bask in the sunshine of approbation. Out of man vanity makes
_gentle_man. The proud man is cold, the selfish man hard and
griping--the vain man desires to shine, to please, to make himself
agreeable; and this amiable feeling works to the outside of suavity and
charm of manner. The French are the vainest people in Europe, and the
most polite.

As each man is to himself the most important thing in the world, each
man is an egotist in his thinkings, in his desires, in his fears. It
does not, however, follow that each man must be an egotist--as the word
is popularly understood--in his speech. But even although this were
the case, the world would be divided into egotists, likable and
unlikable. There are two kinds of egotism, a trifling vainglorious
kind, a mere burning of personal incense, in which the man is at once
altar, priest, censer, and divinity; a kind which deals with the
accidents and wrappages of the speaker, his equipage,