It may be urged that we ought not to regulate our conduct upon the basis of trying to avoid what is dull; but I am myself of opinion that dulness is responsible for a large amount of human error and misery.  Readers of The Pilgrim’s Progress will no doubt remember the young woman whose name was Dull, and her choice of companions—­ Simple, Sloth, Presumption, Short-mind, Slow-pace, No-heart, Linger-after-lust, and Sleepy-head.  These are the natural associates of Madam Dull.  The danger of dulness, whether natural or acquired, is the danger of complacently lingering among stupid and conventional ideas, and losing all the bright interchange of the larger world.  The dull people are not, as a rule, the simple people—­they are generally provided with a narrow and self-sufficient code; they are often entirely self-satisfied, and apt to disapprove of everything that is lively, romantic, and vigorous.  Simplicity, as a rule, is either a natural gift, or else can be attained only by people of strong critical powers, who will, firmly and vigorously, test, examine, and weigh motives, and arrive through experience at a direct and natural method of dealing with men and circumstances.  True simplicity is not an inherited poverty of spirit; it is rather like the poverty of one who has deliberately discarded what is hampering, vexatious, and unnecessary, and has learnt that the art of life consists in disentangling the spirit from all conventional claims, in living by trained impulse and fine instinct, rather than by tradition and authority.  I do not say that the dull people are not probably, in a way, the happier people; I suppose that anything that leads to self-satisfaction is, in a sense, a cause of happiness; but it is not a species of happiness that people ought to pursue.

Perhaps one ought not to use the word dulness, because it may be misunderstood.  The kind of dulness of which I speak is not inconsistent with a high degree, not only of practical, but even of mental, ability.  I know several people of very great intellectual power who are models of dulness.  Their memories are loaded with what is no doubt very valuable information, and their conclusions are of the weightiest character; but they have no vivid perception, no alertness, they are not open to new ideas, they never say an interesting or a suggestive thing; their presence is a load on the spirits of a lively party, their very facial expression is a rebuke to all light-mindedness and triviality.  Sometimes these people are silent, and then to be in their presence is like being in a thick mist; there is no outlook, no enlivening prospect.  Sometimes they are talkers; and I am not sure that that is not even worse, because they generally discourse on their own subjects with profound and serious conviction.  They have no power of conversation, because they are not interested in any one else’s point of view; they care no more who their companions are, than a pump cares what sort of a vessel is put under it—­they