<h2 style="color: red;">The Physiology of Vanity</h2>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Conceit
and
Vanity</div>
<p>"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!" It
is the common human emotion, the
root of the personal equation, the battling
residuum in the last analysis of social chemistry.
There is a wide difference between
conceit and vanity. Conceit is lovable and
unconcealed; vanity is supreme selfishness,
usually hidden. Conceit is based upon an
unselfish desire to please; vanity takes no
thought of others which is not based upon
egotism.</p>
<p>Vanity and jealousy are closely allied, while
conceit is a natural development of altruistic
virtue. Conceit is the mildest of vices; vanity
is the worst. Men are usually conceited
but infrequently vain, while women are seldom
afflicted with the lesser vice.</p>
<p>Man's conceit is the simplest form of self-appreciation.
He thinks he is extremely
good-looking, as men go; that he has seen<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_162" id="Page_162"></SPAN></span>
the world; that he is a good judge of dinners
and of human nature; that he is one of the
few men who may easily charm a woman.</p>
<p>The limits of man's conceit are usually in
full view, but eye nor opera-glass has not yet
approached the end of woman's vanity. The
disease is contagious, and the men who suffer
from it are usually those whose chosen companions
are women.</p>
<p>Woman's vanity is a development of her
insatiate thirst for love. Her smiles and tears
are all-powerful with her lover, and nothing
goes so quickly to a woman's head as a sense
of power. She forever defies the Salic law—each
woman feels that her rightful place is
upon a throne.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The One
Object</div>
<p>The one object of woman's life is the acquirement
of power through love. It is because
this power is freely recognised by the
men who seek her in marriage that her vanity
seldom has full scope until after she is married.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The
Destroyer</div>
<p>After marriage, a great many women begin
the slow process of alienating a man from his
family, blind to the fact that by lessening his
love for others, they add nothing to their own
store. The filial and fraternal love is not to<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_163" id="Page_163"></SPAN></span>
be given to anyone but mother and sisters—they
have no place in a man's heart that another
woman could fill. The destroyer simply
obliterates that part of his life and offers
nothing in its place.</p>
<p>The achievement sometimes takes years,
but it is none the less sure. Later, it may be
extended to father and brothers, but they are
always the last to be considered.</p>
<p>It is most difficult of all to break the tie
which binds a man to his mother. The one
who bore him is not faultless, for motherhood
brings new gifts of feeling, sometimes sacrificing
judgment and clear vision to selfish unselfishness.
It is only in fiction and poetry
that such love is valued now, for the divine
blindness which does not question, which
asks only the right to give, has lost beauty in
our age of reason and restraint.</p>
<p>He had thought that face the most beautiful
in all the world—until he fell in love.
Now he sees his mother as she is; a wrinkled
old woman, perverse, unreasonable, and inclined
to meddle with his domestic affairs.
The hands that soothed his childish fretting
are no longer lovely. Inattention to small<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_164" id="Page_164"></SPAN></span>
details of dress, which he never noticed before,
are painfully evident. The eyes that have
watched him all his life with loving anxiety,
shining with pride at his success and softening
with tenderest pity at his mistakes, are
subtly different now. He wonders at his
blindness. It is strange, indeed, that he has
not realised all this before.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The
Awakening</div>
<p>To most men the awakening comes too
late if it comes at all. Only when the faded
eyes are closed and the worn hands folded forever;
when "mother" is beyond the reach of
praise or blame, her married boy realises what
has been done. With that first shock comes
bitterest repentance—and he never forgives
his wife. Many a woman who complains of
"coldness" and "lost love" might trace it
back to the day her husband's mother died,
and to the sudden flash of insight, the adjustment
of relation, which comes with death.</p>
<p>The comic papers have made the mother-in-law
a thing to be dreaded. She is the
poster attached to the matrimonial magazine
which inspires would-be purchasers with awe.
Many an engaged girl confides to her best
friend that her fiancé's mother is "an old<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_165" id="Page_165"></SPAN></span>
cat." She usually goes still further, and gives
jealousy as the cause of it.</p>
<p>No right-minded mother was ever jealous
of the woman her son chose for his wife.
But she has seen how marriage changes men
and naturally fears the result. The altar is
the grave of many a boy's love for his mother.
Neither of the women most intimately concerned
is blind to the impending possibilities;
it is only man who cannot see.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">One in a
Thousand</div>
<p>There are some girls who realise what it
means, but they are few and far between.
One in a thousand, perhaps, will openly acknowledge
her debt to the woman who for
twenty-five or thirty years has given her best
thought to the man she is about to marry.</p>
<p>Is he strong and active, healthy and finely
moulded? It is his mother's care for the first
sixteen years of his life. It is the result of
her anxious days and of many a sleepless
night, while the potential man was racked
with fever and childish ills. His chivalrous
devotion to the girl he loves is wholly due to
his mother's influence. His clean and open-hearted
manliness is a free gift to her, from
the woman now characterised as "an old cat."<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_166" id="Page_166"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>It is seldom that the mother receives credit
for his virtues, but she is invariably blamed for
his faults. Too many women expect a man
to be cut out by their pattern. The supreme
mental achievement is the ability to judge
other people by their own standards, and a
crank is not necessarily a person whose rules of
life and conduct do not coincide with our own.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The
Thirst for
Power</div>
<p>To this thirst for power may be traced all
of woman's vanity. It is commonly supposed
that she dresses to please others, but she
often values fine raiment principally because
it shows how much her husband thinks of
her. If a man's coat is shiny at the seams
and he postpones the new one that his wife
may have an extra hat, she is delicately
flattered by this unselfish tribute to her charm.</p>
<p>From a single root vanity spreads and flowers
until its poisonous blooms affect all social
life. A woman becomes vain of her house,
her rugs, her tapestries, her jewels, horses,
and even of the livery of her footman.
The things which should be valued for their
intrinsic beauty and the pleasure-giving quality,
which is not by any means selfish, soon
become food for a vice.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_167" id="Page_167"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>She gradually grows to consider herself a
very superior person. She is so charming
and so much to be desired, that some man
works night and day in his office, sacrificing
both pleasure and rest, that she may have the
baubles for which she yearns.</p>
<p>It is not far from absolute self-satisfaction,
in either man or woman, to generous bestowal
of enlightenment upon the unfortunate
savages who linger on the outskirts of one's
social sphere.</p>
<p>In the infinite vastness of creation, where
innumerable worlds move according to the
fiat of majestic Law, there lies one called
Earth. There are planets within reach of the
scientific vision of its inhabitants that are
many times larger. There are some which
have more moons, more mountains and rivers,
longer days, and longer years. Countless
suns, the centres of other vast planetary systems,
lie in the inconceivable distances beyond.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">A Mote in
the Sun</div>
<p>In the midst of this unspeakable greatness,
Earth swings like one of the motes which a
passing sunbeam illumines. Upon this mote,
one fifth of the inhabitants have assumed
supreme knowledge and understanding, given<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_168" id="Page_168"></SPAN></span>
them, doubtless, because of their innate superiority.
This preferment, also, is theirs by
the grace of an infinitely just and merciful
God.</p>
<p>The other four fifths are supposedly in total
darkness, though the same heavens are over
their heads, the same earth under their feet,
and though the light of sun and moon and the
gentle radiance of the stars are freely given to
all.</p>
<p>There are the same opportunities for development
and civilisation, but they have not
received The Enlightenment. To them must
go the foreign missionaries, to teach the things
which have been graciously given them on
account of their innate superiority.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Narrowing
Circles</div>
<p>Man's life is a succession of narrowing
circles. He admits the force of the heliocentric
idea, for it is the sun which gives light
and heat. Then the circle narrows, almost
imperceptibly, for, of all the planets which
circle around the sun, is not Earth the chief?</p>
<p>This point being gained, he is inside the
geocentric circle. Earth is the centre of creation.
Sun, moon, and stars are auxiliary
forces, bountifully arranged by the Giver of<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_169" id="Page_169"></SPAN></span>
all Good for Earth's beauty and comfort. Of
all the creatures who share in this, is not man
the most important? Thus he retreats to the
anthropocentric circle.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">By
Strength
of Mind
and Arm</div>
<p>Man is the centre of organic life, and it is
easily seen that his race is far superior to the
others. Their skins are not the same colour,
their ships are not so mighty, their cunning
with weapons is infinitely less. His race is
dominant by strength of mind and arm.</p>
<p>The dark-skinned races must be taught
civilisation, with fire and sword, with cannon
and bayonet, with crime and death. They
must be civilised before they can be happy.
The naked savage who sits beneath a palm
tree, with his hut in the distance, while his
wife and children hover around him, is happy
only because he is too ignorant to know what
happiness is.</p>
<p>In order to be rightly happy, he must have
a fine house, carriages, and servants, and live
in a crowded city where tall buildings and
smoke limit one's horizon to a narrow patch
of blue. He must struggle daily with his
fellows, not for the necessaries of life, but
for small pieces of silver and bits of green<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_170" id="Page_170"></SPAN></span>
paper, which are not nearly as pretty as glass
beads.</p>
<p>The savage, unaccustomed to refinement,
stabs or beheads his enemy. Civilisation will
teach him the uses of poison, and that putting
typhoid germs into the drinking water of an
Emperor is much more delicate and fully as
effectual.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The
Sublime
Egotism</div>
<p>From this small circle, it is only a step to
the centre and to that sublime egotism which
has been named Vanity.</p>
<p>Man repeats in his own life the development
of a nation. He progresses from unquestioning
happiness to childish inquiry and wonder,
from fairy tales of princes and dragons to
actual knowledge; through inquiry to doubt,
through faith to disbelief, through civilisation
to decay.</p>
<p>He is not content to let other nations and
others races pursue their normal development.
He insists that the work of centuries be
crowded into a generation. And in the same
manner, the growth and strivings of his fellows
call forth his unselfish aid. Having infinite
treasures of mental equipment, gained
by superior opportunity and wider experience,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_171" id="Page_171"></SPAN></span>
he will generously share his noble possessions.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Personal
Vanity</div>
<p>It is personal vanity of the most flagrant
type which intrudes itself, unasked, into other
people's affairs. There are few of us who do
not feel capable of ordering the daily lives of
others, down to the most minute detail.</p>
<p>We know how their houses should be arranged,
how they should spend and invest
their money, how they should dress, how
they should comport themselves, and more
definitely yet do we know the things they
should not do. We know what is right and
what is wrong, while they, poor things! do
not. We know whom and when they should
marry, how their children should be educated
and trained, and what servants they should
employ.</p>
<p>We know for what pursuit each one is best
fitted and how each should occupy his spare
time. We know to what church all should
go; what creed all should believe. We know
what particular traits are faults and how these
can be corrected. We know so much about
other people that we often have not time to
give due attention to ourselves. We neglect<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_172" id="Page_172"></SPAN></span>
our own affairs that we may unselfishly direct
others, and sometimes suffer in consequence,
for nobody but a lawyer makes a good living
by attending to other people's business.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Theoretically</div>
<p>Theoretically, this should be pleasing to
each one. Every person of sense should be
delighted at being told just what to do. It
would relieve him from all care, all responsibility;
the necessity for thought, planning,
and individual judgment would be wholly
removed.</p>
<p>The musical student would not have to select
his own instrument, his own teacher, nor
even his own practice time. Every author
would know just how and when to write,
and in order to become famous, he need only
act upon the suggestions for stories and improvement
of style which are gratuitously
given him from day to day, by people who
cannot write a clear and correct sentence.
This thing actually happened; consequently
it is just the theme for fiction. This plot,
suitably developed, would make the nations
sit up, and send the race by hundred thousands
to the corner bookstore.</p>
<p>The cares incident to selecting a wardrobe<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_173" id="Page_173"></SPAN></span>
would be wholly removed. Every woman
knows how every other should dress. Her
sure taste selects at a glance the thing which
will best become the other, and over which
the Unenlightened may ponder for hours.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">A Common
Vanity</div>
<p>There is no more common vanity than
claiming to "know" some particular person.
We are "all things to all men." The two
who love each other better than all the world
beside, have much knowledge, but it is not
by any means complete. "Souls reach out to
each other across the impassable gulfs of individual
being." And yet, daily, people who
have no sympathy with us, and scarcely a
common interest, will assume to "know" us,
when we do not fully know ourselves, and
when we earnestly hide our real selves from
all save the single soul we love.</p>
<p>To assume intimate knowledge of the hundred
considerations which make up a single
situation, the various complexities of temperament
and disposition which the personal equation
continually produces in human affairs, of
the imperceptible fibres of the web which lies
between two souls, preventing always the fullest
understanding, unless Love, the magician,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_174" id="Page_174"></SPAN></span>
gives new sight—amounts to the proclamation
of practical Omnipotence.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">"I Told
You So"</div>
<p>There is no position in life which is secure.
No complication ever comes to our friends,
which our advice, acted upon, would not immediately
solve. If our most minute directions
are not thankfully received and put into
effect, there is always the comforting indication
of superiority—"I told you so."</p>
<p>And when the jaded soul revolts in supreme
defiance, declaring its right to its own life, its
own duties, its own friendships, and its own
loves, there is much expressed disgust, much
misfortune predicted, and, saddest of all, much
wounded vanity.</p>
<p>The dominant egotism forbids that anything
shall be better than itself. No success is comparable
to one's own, no life so wisely ordered,
and there is nothing so sad as the fame
attained by those who do not follow our
advice.</p>
<p>Adversity is commonly accepted as the test
of friendship, but there is another more certain
still—success. Anyone may bestow
pity. It is fatally easy to offer to those less
fortunate than ourselves; whose capabilities<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_175" id="Page_175"></SPAN></span>
have not proved adequate, as ours have; but it
requires fine gifts of generous feeling to be genuinely
glad at another's good fortune, in which
we cannot by any possibility hope to share.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Advice</div>
<p>Advice is usually to be had for the asking.
In the case of a corporation attorney or a
specialist, there is a high value placed upon
it, but it is to be freely had from those who
love us, and, strangely enough, from those
who do not.</p>
<p>It is one of the blessings of love, that all
the experience of another, all the battles of
the other soul, are laid open for our better
understanding of our own path. But there is
a subtle distinction between the counsel of
love and that of vanity. The one is unselfishly
glad of our achievements, taking new
delight in every step upward, while the other
passes over triumphs in silence and carps upon
the misfortune until it is not to be borne.</p>
<p>From the intimate union of two loving
souls, Vanity is forever shut out. Jealousy
dare not show her malignant face. These
two are facing the world together, side by
side and shoulder to shoulder, each the other's
strength and shield.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_176" id="Page_176"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>Success may come only after many failures;
the tide may not turn till after long discouragement
and great despair. But in the union
with that other soul, so gently baring its inmost
dream that the other may understand,
defeat loses its sting.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The
Sanctuary
of that
Other
Soul</div>
<p>Ambition forever beckons, like a will o' the
wisp. When realisation seems within easy
reach, the dream fades, or another, seemingly
unattainable, mockingly takes its place. But
in the sanctuary of that other soul, there is
always new courage to be found. Long
aisles and quiet spaces lessen the fever and
the unrest. Darkness and cool shadows soothe
the burning eyes, and in the clasp of those
loving arms there is certain sleep.</p>
<p>Vanity cares for nothing which is not in
some way its own, and it is perhaps an
amorphous vanity, as carbon is akin to a
diamond, that makes a hard-won victory
doubly dear.</p>
<p>There are always sycophants to fawn and
flatter, there are hands that will gladly help
that they may claim their share of the result,
but that realised dream is wholly sweet in
which only the dreamer and the other soul<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_177" id="Page_177"></SPAN></span>
have fully believed. Failure, even, is more
easily borne if it is entirely one's own; if there
is no one else to be blamed.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The
Bitter
Proof</div>
<p>"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." So
spake the prophet in Jerusalem and the centuries
have brought the bitter proof. Vanity
has reared palaces which have vanished like
the architecture of a mirage. Vanity has led
the hosts against itself.</p>
<p>Where are Babylon and Nineveh; the hanging
gardens and the splendour of forgotten
kings? Where are Cæsar and Cleopatra; Trianon
and Marie Antoinette? Where is the
lordly Empire of France? Is it buried with
military honours, in the grave of the exiled
Napoleon?</p>
<p>Vanity's pomp endureth for a day, but Vanity
itself is perennial. Vanity sets whole races
of men in motion, pitting them against each
other across intervening seas.</p>
<p>One woman has a stone, no larger than a
pea, brought from a mine in South Africa.
Vanity sets it proudly upon her breast and
leads other women to envy her its possession,
for purely selfish reasons. One woman's
gown is made from a plant which grows in<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_178" id="Page_178"></SPAN></span>
Georgia and she is unhappy because it is not
the product of a French or Japanese worm.</p>
<p>One woman's coat is woven from the covering
of a sheep, and she is not content because
it has not cost a greater number of silver
pieces and more bits of green paper, besides
the life of an Arctic seal, that never harmed
her nor hers.</p>
<p>Vanity allows a tender-hearted woman,
who cannot see a child or a dumb brute in
pain, to order the tails of her horses cut to the
fashionable length and to wear upon her hat
the pitiful little body of a song-bird that has
been skinned alive.</p>
<p>Vanity permits a woman to trim the outer
garments of the little stranger for whose coming
she has long waited and prayed, with
pretty, fluffy fur torn from the unborn baby of
another mother—who is only a sheep. Vanity
permits a woman to insist that her combs
and pins shall be real tortoise-shell, which is
obtained from the quivering animal by roasting
it alive before a slow fire.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">All is
Vanity</div>
<p>"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!" The
mad race still goes on. It is insatiate vanity
which wrecks lives, ruins homes, torments<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_179" id="Page_179"></SPAN></span>
one's fellows, and blinds the clear vision of its
victims. It harms others, but most of all
one's self.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The Conqueror</div>
<p>There is only one place from which it is
shut out—from the union with that other
soul. Great as it is, there is still a greater
force; there is the inevitable conqueror, for
Vanity cannot exist side by side with Love.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_181" id="Page_181"></SPAN></span><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</SPAN></span></p>
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