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, his riches, his family, his servants, his furniture and array. The other kind has no taint of self-aggrandisement, but is rooted in the faculties of love and humour, and this latter kind is never offensive, because it includes others, and knows no scorn or exclusiveness. The one is the offspring of a narrow and unimaginative personality; the other of a large and genial one. There are persons who are the terrors of society. Perfectly innocent of evil intention, they are yet, with a certain brutal unconsciousness, continually trampling on other people's corns. They touch you every now and again like a red-hot iron. You wince, acquit them of any desire to wound, but find forgiveness a hard task. These persons remember everything about themselves, and forget everything about you. They have the instinct of a flesh-fly for a raw. Should your great-grandfather have had the misfortune to be hanged, such a person is certain, on some public occasion, to make allusion to your pedigree. He will probably insist on your furnishing him with a sketch of your family tree. If your daughter has made a runaway marriage--on which subject yourself and friends maintain a judicious silence--he is certain to stumble upon it, and make the old sore smart again. In all this there is no malice, no desire to wound; it arises simply from want of imagination, from profound immersion in self. An imaginative man recognises at once a portion of himself in his fellow, and speaks to that. To hurt you is to hurt himself. Much of the rudeness we encounter in life cannot be properly set down to cruelty or badness of heart. The unimaginative man is callous, and although he hurts easily, he cannot be easily hurt in return. The imaginative man is sensitive, and merciful to others, out of the merest mercy to himself.