who threatens society with his
strength--goes elbowing about in it--insisting upon living other
people's lives for them as well as his own. The man who expects too much
of others threatens society with weariness. He is always expecting other
people to do his living for him. The man who expects too much of books
lives neither in himself nor in any one else. The career of the Paper
Doll is open to him. History seems to be always taking turns with these
three temperaments whether in art or religion or public affairs,--the
over-manned, the under-manned, and the over-read--the Tyrant, the Tramp,
and the Paper Doll. Between the man who keeps things in his own hands,
and the man who does not care to, and the man who has no hands, the
State has a hard time. Nothing could be more important to the existence
of the State than that every man in it shall expect just enough of
himself and just enough of others and just enough of the world of books.
Living is adjusting these worlds to one another. The central fact about
society is the way it helps a man with himself. The society which cuts a
man off from himself cuts him still farther off from every one else. A
man's reading in the first person--enough to have a first person--enough
to be identified with himself, is one of the defences of society.

IV

i + I = We

The most natural course for a human being, who is going to identify
himself with other people, is to begin by practising on himself. If he
has not succeeded in identifying himself with himself, he makes very
trying work of the rest of us. A man who has not learned to say "I" and
mean something very real by it, has it not in his power, without dulness
or impertinence, to say "you" to any living creature. If a man has not
learned to say "you," if he has not taken hold of himself, interpreted
and adjusted himself to those who are face to face with him, the wider
and more general privilege of saying "they," of judging any part of
mankind or any temperament in it, should be kept away from him. It is
only as one has experienced a temperament, has in some mood of one's
life said "I" in that temperament, that one has the outfit for passing
an opinion on it, or the outfit for living with it, or for being in the
same world with it.

There are times, it must be confessed, when Christ's command, that every
man shall love his neighbour as himself, seems inconsiderate. There are
some of us who cannot help feeling, when we see a man