“There is a great advantage in rank, which gives to a man of eighteen or twenty a degree of acceptance, publicity, and respect which another can hardly obtain by merit at fifty. It is a gain of thirty years without any trouble. “Respect for others requires you to inconvenience yourself. This seems foolish, yet it is very proper. It seems to say, I would gladly inconvenience myself if you really required me to do so, seeing I am ready to do so without serving you. “‘This is _my_ dog,’ say children; ‘that sunny seat is mine.’ There is the beginning and type of the usurpation of the whole earth. “This _I_ is hateful. You, Miton, {171} merely cover it, you do not take it away; you are therefore always hateful. Not at all, you say; for if we act obligingly to all men, they have no reason to hate us. So far true, if there was nothing hateful in the _I_ itself but the displeasure which it gives. But if I hate it because it is essentially unjust, because it makes itself the centre of everything, I shall hate it always. In short, this _I_ has two qualities: it is unjust in itself, in that it makes itself the centre of everything; it is an annoyance to others, in that it would serve itself by them. Each _I_ is the enemy, and would be the tyrant, of all others. “He who would thoroughly know the vanity of men has only to consider the causes and effects of love. The cause is a _je ne sais quoi_, an indefinable trifle—the effects are monstrous. If the nose of Cleopatra had been a little shorter, it would have changed the history of the world. “You have a bad manner—‘excuse me, if you please.’ Without the apology I should not have known that there was any harm done. Begging your pardon, the ‘excuse me,’ is all the mischief. “Do you wish men to speak well of you? Then never speak well of yourself. “The more mind we have, the more do we observe men of original mind. It is your commonplace people that find no difference betwixt one man and another. “It is the contest that delights us, and not the victory. It is the same in play, and the same in search for truth. We love to watch in argument the conflicts of opinion; but the plain truth we do not care to look at. To regard it with pleasure, we must see it gradually emerging from the contest of debate. It is the same with passions: the struggle of two contending passions has great interest, but the dominance of one is mere brutality. “The example of chastity in Alexander has not availed in the same degree to make men chaste, as his drunkenness has to make them intemperate. Men are not ashamed not to be so virtuous as he; and it seems excusable not to be more vicious. A man thinks he is not altogether sunk in the mud when he follows the vices of great men.