set phrases that resemble human speech.

Yet within this odd simulacrum of a worldly, entertaining, and
interested gentleman, a living mind surveys the gay scene with a
strange, emotionless detachment--just so, perhaps, will it eventually
survive the body. We are really alive, conscious that we dislike
change, nervous when moved and stood up in another place, and
intellectually certain that no real harm can come to us. One is reminded
of Seneca's observation: _Vere magnum, habere fragilitatem hominis,
securitatem dei._ There is about us something of the frailty of a man,
something of the security of a god; the pity of it is that we cannot
follow Seneca to his conclusion and comfort ourselves with the thought
that we are 'truly great.'

I have often wondered, while 'dolling up,' as the strikingly appropriate
modernism puts it, for such a function, whether there is any universal
reason why a reluctant man should go to an afternoon tea. There are, of
course, many individual reasons, more or less important to the
individual tea-goer; but for us the impulsion comes inevitably from
without. The verb 'drag,' often applied to the process by which a man is
brought to a tea, indicates how valuable would be the discovery of a
Universal Reason wherefore any man might hope to derive some personal
good from this inescapable experience.

An excellent place for the thinker to examine this problem is in his
bath-tub preparatory to dolling up. He is alone and safe from
interruption, unless he has forgotten to lock the door; his memory and
observation of afternoon teas past is stimulated by afternoon tea to
come; and he is himself more like the Universal Man than on most other
occasions. Featherless biped mammals that we are, what need have we in
common that might conceivably provide a good and sufficient reason for
the dolling up to which I am about to subject myself? Substantial food,
less fleeting, however, than a lettuce or other sandwich and a dainty
trifle of pastry; protective clothing; a house, or even a cave, to
shelter us in cold or stormy weather--these, evidently, are clearly
apprehended necessities, and we will march on the soles of our feet,
like the plantigrade creatures we are, wherever such goods are
obtainable.

If all men were hungry, naked, and homeless, and the afternoon tea
provided food, clothes, and a home, any man would jump at an invitation.
But there are other necessities of living--and here, too, I in my