or even alter our shape altogether. Intellectual conversation, whether
grave or humorous, is only fit for intellectual society; it is
downright abhorrent to ordinary people, to please whom it is
absolutely necessary to be commonplace and dull. This demands an act
of severe self-denial; we have to forfeit three-fourths of ourselves
in order to become like other people. No doubt their company may be
set down against our loss in this respect; but the more a man is
worth, the more he will find that what he gains does not cover what he
loses, and that the balance is on the debit side of the account; for
the people with whom he deals are generally bankrupt,--that is to say,
there is nothing to be got from their society which can compensate
either for its boredom, annoyance and disagreeableness, or for the
self-denial which it renders necessary. Accordingly, most society is
so constituted as to offer a good profit to anyone who will exchange
it for solitude.

Nor is this all. By way of providing a substitute for real--I mean
intellectual--superiority, which is seldom to be met with, and
intolerable when it is found, society has capriciously adopted a false
kind of superiority, conventional in its character, and resting upon
arbitrary principles,--a tradition, as it were, handed down in the
higher circles, and, like a password, subject to alteration; I refer
to _bon-ton_ fashion. Whenever this kind of superiority comes into
collision with the real kind, its weakness is manifest. Moreover, the
presence of _good tone_ means the absence of _good sense_.

No man can be in _perfect accord_ with any one but himself--not even
with a friend or the partner of his life; differences of individuality
and temperament are always bringing in some degree of discord, though
it may be a very slight one. That genuine, profound peace of mind,