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 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.

[Sidenote:  By Strength of Mind and Arm]

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.

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.

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 paper, which are not nearly as pretty as glass beads.

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.

[Sidenote:  The Sublime Egotism]

From this small circle, it is only a step to the centre and to that sublime egotism which has been named Vanity.

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.

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, he will generously share his noble possessions.

[Sidenote:  Personal Vanity]

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.

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.