The most important part of life is the importance of appearing important. The “air of importance” is the thin monoxide that makes the social circle so rarefied and difficult to breathe in; yet there are many who will suffer semisuffocation of the thought-waves to float in the upper reaches of mental make-believe. For life is a stage and man utilises all possible “props” to prop up his sense of importance and knock his sense of impotence. His apparel clothes the self-deception, motors propel it, mansions house it, and his face reflects it; which, things being as they argue, rather than as they are, is no more unnatural than it appears. The only alternative is to be one's self, and this of course is as unthinkable as thinking and other old fashioned practices. But there still exist people who prefer to remain put. In fact the world is inhabited by people who like to be what they are, and people who try to be what they'd like to be. The latter often assert that they are proud to be what they are and then move heaven and earth to be something else. In many cases it is all to the good.

Importance proves the importance of advertising on personal grounds by inflation of face values, for the more pertinacious the personal propaganda, the more prolific the profits. A man's face is his fortune, or his misfortune, according to how he advertises it. Thus the wages of skin is not necessarily debt, and the imposing front is often the elevation that elevates its owtter to the Elysium of L.S.D.-sium.