“I thought you would like it better.”
“Truth is better than fiction, certainly. But I am afraid he has a tendency to morbid self-contemplation, and you ought to shake him out of it.”
“What is the difference between self-contemplation and self-examination?”
“The difference between your brother and yourself. Ah! you think that no answer. Will you have a medical simile? Self-examination notes the symptoms and combats them; self-contemplation does as I did when I was unstrung by that illness at Poonshedagore, and was always feeling my own pulse. It dwells on them, and perpetually deplores itself. Oh, dear! this is no better—what a wretch I am. It is always studying its deformities in a moral looking-glass.”
“Yes, I think poor Norman does that, but I thought it right and humble.”
“The humility of a self-conscious mind. It is the very reverse of your father, who is the most really humble man in existence.”
“Do you call self-consciousness a fault?”
“No. I call it a misfortune. In the vain, it leads to prudent vanity; in the good, to a painful effort of humility.”
“I don’t think I quite understand what it is.”
“No, and you have so much of your father in you, that you never will. But take care of your brother, and don’t let his brains work.”