But whatever he does and thinks he does and thinks under the conviction that if he did and thought otherwise the consequences would be disastrous to himself if not to others. Whereas the truth is that to change all his habits from morn to eve would result in great benefit to him. He spends his days attaching vast quantities of importance to a vast number of things. Whereas the truth is, that scarcely any of the said things are important in more than the slightest degree. He is the victim of not one delusion but of hundreds of delusions, and especially the grand delusion that the world is ready to come to an end on the most trifling provocation. But there is no hope of him being sent to join the poached egg in the lunatic asylum. His friends are content to say of him: ‘He’s rather a particular man.’ True, his enemies scorn and objurgate him, and proclaim him pernicious to society. You naturally are his enemy, and you scorn him. But you should beware how you scorn him, because you may unconsciously be on the way to becoming a complete fusser yourself. All of us--or at any rate ninety-nine out of every hundred of us--have within us the insidious microbe of fussiness. III The way to becoming a complete fusser is obscure at the start of it. To determine the predisposing causes to fussiness would necessitate volumes of research into the secrets of individuality and the origins of character--and would assuredly lead to no practical result, because these creative mysteries lie beyond our influence--at any rate for the present. A man is born with or without the instinct to fuss--that must suffice for us. Nevertheless the real instinct to fuss ought not to be confused with perfectly normal impulses which may superficially resemble it. Thus it is often assumed that domestic servants as a class are fussy, especially about their food. I can see no reason why domestic servants as a class should be fussy, and I do not believe they are. What is mistaken for fussiness in them is merely the universal human prejudice against anything to which one is not accustomed. Labouring people are, unfortunately for themselves, used to a narrow diet. A hundred comestibles which to their alleged superiors may seem quite commonplace are fearsomely strange to labouring people. A rural girl goes to serve in a large house; she is offered excellent fish, and she refuses it; she ‘can’t fancy it.’ Whereupon the mistress exclaims upon the astounding fussiness of the poor! The explanation of the affair is simply that the rural girl has never had opportunity to regard fish as an article of diet.