If we inquire into the cause of this neurosis we find it to be a defective educational method in childhood, which has led the child to overvalue its environment and has implanted in it a pathologic degree of vanity. How many parents have the habit of calling the child’s attention to the fact that people are looking at it, observing it, or laughing at it! How often when a child is wearing a new garment is it told that everybody is looking at it and admiring it! And how often is a child admired and worshipped to such an extent that it really imagines itself the hub of its little world! All the boundless overvaluation of the world, of one’s surroundings, the striving for public recognition, for reputation, for honour emanate from our childhood years. We ought to make it our object to bring about just the opposite. The child should be brought up to be modest, to learn that happiness lies in the feeling of having done one’s duty, in the quiet joys of life, in work, in a capacity for enjoyment. It is our duty to limit the child’s vanity, to restrain his ambition, and to train him to be self-reliant. One who has learned to consider contentment with oneself--not self-satisfaction based on vanity and arrogance--as worth more than what people say about one has found the way to health and happiness. Who would deny that a mirror has its uses? Who does not know that it is necessary occasionally to observe ourselves in the mirror of the body and the soul so that we may recognize our shortcomings, remove our blemishes, and make ourselves better and more beautiful? All excess becomes a vice. A mirror is a dangerous thing for the vain person who cannot live without it. Everything is a mirror to him. The world as a whole is a mirrored salon which reflects his image from every point. But he fails to see that behind these mirrors there is another world to which he has lost access. For the next step beyond this mirror-neurosis is insanity, a disease which we now know is a losing of oneself in oneself. _Printed in Great Britain by The Cheltenham Press, Cheltenham, Glos._ TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE Archaic, unusual and inconsistent spellings have been kept in the text. Obvious misspellings have been fixed. Details of the changes: