“Happily for you every trace of such arrogance and contempt and ambition is absent from your system. You have nothing merely mimetic in you; you live unashamed and truthful in presence of all that the world is capable of being. It is one of the surest signs of fear of threatening annihilation that a species has to simulate the appearance or the modes of life of another. Hypocrisy in the human race, like mimicry in the kinds of animals and plants, is the brand of feebleness and the omen of coming decay and subjugation. We use truth and sincerity as one of the most inward of tests of a strong and healthy nature. In the olden days, as in all large and mixed civilisations, it was difficult to distinguish the imitation virtue from the real, and when it was discovered it was easy to pardon it and even accept it as a virtue amid the universal effort at simulation. But when we had swept out the survivals of primitive and savage times and the atavistic returns to them, we found that every need of mimetic virtue had disappeared. The slightest taint of unreality or falsehood in any of our community is as offensive as carrion; we rise in a body and have it removed. And we have as keen an enjoyment of sincerity and truthfulness. Your loyal character at once attracted us to you; we felt that all germs of moral disease would lose their virulence within its influence, as germs of physical disease lose theirs in sunshine.” CHAPTER II MY EDUCATION