“Such as—the instinct to be self-controlled; not to be rude or intolerant; not to ‘slop-over’; not to fuss, nor to cry out; to hold your head up, so that people refrain from taking liberties; to be ready to do things for others, to be chary of asking others to do things for you, and grateful when they do them?” “Yes,” I said, “all these I believe in.” “What central truth do you imagine that these instincts come from?” “Well, they’re all such a matter of course—I don’t think I ever considered.” “If by any chance,” he replied, “you ever do, you will find they come from an innate worship of balance, of the just mean; an inborn reverence for due proportion, a natural sense of harmony and rhythm, and a consequent mistrust of extravagance. What is a bounder? Just a man without sufficient sense of proportion to know that he is not so important in the scheme of things as he thinks he is!” “You are right there!” “Very well. Refinement is a quality of the individual who has—and conforms to—a true (not a conventional) sense of proportion; and vulgarity is either the natural conduct of people without that sense of proportion, or of people who imitate and reproduce the tricks of refinement wholesale, without any real feeling for proportion; or again, it is mere conscious departure from the sense of proportion for the sake of cutting a dash.” “Ah!” I said; “and to which of these kinds of vulgarity is the fashion of docking horses’ tails a guardian angel?” “Imagine,” he answered gravely, “that you dock your horse’s tail. You are either horribly deficient in feeling for a perfectly proportioned horse, or you imitate what you believe—goodness knows why—to be the refined custom of docking horses’ tails, without considering the question of proportion at all.” “Yes,” I said; “but what makes so many people do it, if there isn’t something in it, either useful or ornamental?” “Because people as a rule do not love proportion; they love the grotesque. You have only to look at their faces, which are very good indications of their souls.” “You have begged the question,” I said. “Who are you to say that the perfect horse is not the horse——?” “With the imperfect tail?” “Imperfect? Again, you’re begging.” “As Nature made it, then. Oh!” he went on with vehemence, “think of the luxury of having your own tail. Think of the cool swish of it. Think of the real beauty of it! Think of the sheer hideousness of all that great front balanced behind by a few scrub hairs and a wriggle! It became ‘smart’ to dock horses’ tails; and smart to wear ‘aigrettes.’ ‘Smart’—‘neat’—‘efficient’—for all except the horse and the poor egrets.” “Your argument,” I said, “is practically nothing but æsthetics.” He fixed his eyes upon my hat.