Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts… He becomes an echo of some one else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development… People are afraid of themselves, nowadays.
Lord Henry condemns “influence” while actively exerting it, which is the paradox that powers the book. The passage flatters Dorian’s hunger for originality, making independence sound glamorous and moral. Yet the rhetoric is a glove over a hand that is already steering him. “Echo” and “actor” sketch the danger: a self can be colonized by style. Wilde shows how charismatic speech can feel like liberation even as it narrows choice. The speech also reframes sin as borrowed, softening guilt for what comes next. Readers recognize the timeless trap—when someone brands control as freedom.