important part in the Divine Economy.  If one did not keep himself afloat, he would surely go under.  As it is, no matter how disagreeable a person is, he likes himself,—­no matter how uninteresting, he is interested in himself.  Everybody, you, my critic, as well, likes to talk about himself, if he can get other people to listen; and so long as I can get several thousand people to listen to me, I shall keep talking, you may be sure, and so would you,—­and if you don’t, it is only because you can’t!  You are just as egotistical as I am, only you won’t own it frankly, as I do.  True, I might escape censure by using such circumlocutions as “the writer,” “the author,” or still more cumbrously by dressing out some lay figure, calling it Frederic or Frederika, and then, like the Delphic priestesses, uttering my sentiments through its mouth, for the space of a folio novel; but at bottom it would be my own self all the while; and besides, in order to get at the thing I wanted to say, I should have to detain you on a thousand things that I did not care about, but which would be necessary as links, because, when you have made a man or a woman, you must do, something with him.  You can’t leave him standing, without any visible means of support.  One person writes a novel of four hundred pages to convince you in a roundabout way, through thirty different characters, that a certain law, or the mode of administering it, is unjust.  He does not mention himself, but makes his men and women speak his arguments.  Another man writes a treatise of forty pages and gives you his views out of his own mouth.  But he does not put himself into his treatise any more than the other into his novel.  For my part, I think the use of “I” is the shortest and simplest way of launching one’s opinions.  Even a we bulges out into twice the space that I requires, besides seeming to try to evade responsibility.  Better say “I” straight out,—­“I,” responsible for my words here and elsewhere, as they used to say in Congress under the old regime.  Besides being the most brave, “I” is also the most modest.  It delivers your opinions to the world through a perfectly transparent medium.  “I” has no relations.  It has no consciousness.  It is a pure abstraction.  It detains you not a moment from the subject.  “The writer” does.  It brings up ideas entirely detached from the theme, and is therefore impertinent.  All you are after is the thing that is thought.  It is not of the smallest consequence who thought it.  You may be certain that it is not always the people who use “I” the most freely who think most about themselves; and if you are offended, consider whether it may not be owing to a certain morbidness of your taste as much as to egotism in the offender.