MIRROR SLAVES. There are persons who spend their entire lives under the tyranny of the mirror. From early morning to late at night they are thinking, “How do I look to-day?” The mirror follows them into their dreams and shows them their ego horribly distorted and grotesquely transformed, or it annihilates the imperfections which make them so unhappy. Everybody has a tremendous interest in his personal appearance, an interest which may assume such proportions as to amount to self-love, to being in love with one’s bodily ego, or to hatred of one’s self, disgust with one’s own appearance. Ultimately every one of us is egocentric. For each one of us our ego is the hub of the world. Every slightest happening is looked at and judged from the standpoint of our own ego. In the mirror slaves this trait is exaggerated to the n-th degree, to the extent of being uncanny and neurotic. They spend their lives in front of the corporeal and spiritual mirror. For they fix their gaze not only on their physical appearance, but even on their thoughts, feelings, sensations, and work; they are constantly checking themselves up, criticising themselves, and are most discontented with themselves, or they are ridiculously conceited, and never cease to admire their actions and transformations. Mirror slaves waste a part of their lives in front of the mirror. They keep a little mirror by them constantly so as to look at themselves from time to time. They can’t pass a mirror without stopping in front of it long enough to survey themselves from head to foot. There is a story of a king who promised to give his daughter in marriage to the man who would pass a certain mirror without looking into it. Vanity foiled all but a poet, and the princess was awarded to him. (And, in all probability, the poet did not look into the mirror because he was absorbed in admiring his ego in the mirror of his soul!) This story teaches us the intensity of human vanity. In the case of mirror slaves this human failing becomes a disease; it fills their lives and, under certain circumstances, unfits them for life.