It is
selfishness if it could be corrected and is not, because it makes
exactions from others without return. It will not adapt itself to them
but insists on being taken as it is, whether acceptable or not. At best,
eccentricity is a morbid tendency liable to run into extremes when its
habits are undisturbed. An excuse sometimes made for eccentricity is
that it is a security against any further mental aberration, perhaps on
the same principle that inoculation producing a mild form of diseases is
sometimes a safeguard against their attacks. But if the mind and habits
of life can be brought under control, so as to take part in ordinary
affairs without attracting attention or having exemptions and allowance
made for them, a result of a far higher order will have been attained.
To recognize eccentricity as selfishness is a first step to its cure,
and to make oneself serviceable to others is the simplest corrective.
Whatever else they may be, "eccentrics" are not generally serviceable.
Children of vivid imagination, nervously excitable and fragile in
constitution, rather easily fall into little eccentric ways which grow
very rapidly and are hard to overcome. One of the commonest of these is
talking to themselves. Sitting still, making efforts to apply their
minds to lessons for more than a short time, accentuates the tendency by
nerve fatigue.
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