CIV. The greatest talents do not generally attain to the highest stations. For though high, the ascent to them is narrow, beaten, and crooked. The path of genius is free, and its own. Whatever requires the concurrence and co-operation of others, must depend chiefly on routine and an attention to rules and minutiæ. Success in business is therefore seldom owing to uncommon talents or original power, which is untractable and self-willed, but to the greatest degree of common-place capacity.
CV. The error in the reasonings of Mandeville, Rochefoucault, and others, is this: they first find out that there is something mixed in the motives of all our actions, and they then proceed to argue, that they must all arise from one motive, viz. self-love. They make the exception the rule. It would be easy to reverse the argument, and prove that our most selfish actions are disinterested. There is honour among thieves. Robbers, murderers, &c. do not commit those actions, from a pleasure in pure villainy, or for their own benefit only, but from a mistaken regard to the welfare or good opinion of those with whom they are immediately connected.
CVI. It is ridiculous to say, that compassion, friendship, &c. are at bottom only selfishness in disguise, because it is we who feel pleasure or pain in the good or evil of others; for the meaning of self-love is not that it is I who love, but that I love myself. The motive is no more selfish because it is I who feel it, than the action is selfish because it is I who perform it. To prove a man selfish, it is not surely enough to say, that it is he who feels (this is a mere quibble) but to shew that he does not feel for another; that is, that the idea of the suffering or welfare of others does not excite any feeling whatever of pleasure or pain in his mind, except from some reference to or reflection on himself. Self-love or the love of self means, that I have an immediate interest in the contemplation of my own good, and that this is a motive to action; and benevolence or the love of others means in like manner, that I have an immediate interest in the idea of the good or evil that may befall them, and a disposition to assist them, in consequence. Self-love, in a word, is sympathy with myself, that is, it is I who feel it, and I who am the object of it: in benevolence or compassion, it is I who still feel sympathy, but another (not myself) is the object of it. If I feel sympathy with others at all, it must be disinterested. The pleasure it may give me is the consequence, not the cause, of my feeling it. To insist that sympathy is self-love because we cannot feel for others, without being ourselves affected pleasurably or painfully, is to make nonsense of the question; for it is to insist that in order to feel for others properly and truly, we must in the first place feel nothing. C’est une mauvaise plaisanterie. That the feeling exists in the individual must be granted, and never admitted of a question: the only question is, how that feeling is caused, and what is its object—and it is to express the two opinions that may be entertained on this subject, that the terms self-love and benevolence have been appropriated. Any other interpretation of them is an evident abuse of language, and a subterfuge in argument, which, driven from the fair field of fact and observation, takes shelter in verbal sophistry.
CVII. Humility and pride are not easily distinguished from each other. A proud man, who fortifies himself in his own good opinion, may be supposed not to put forward his pretensions through shyness or deference to others: a modest man, who is really reserved and afraid of committing himself, is thought distant and haughty: and the vainest coxcomb, who makes a display of himself and his most plausible qualifications, often does so to hide his deficiencies and to prop up his tottering opinion of himself by the applause of others. Vanity does not refer to the opinion a man entertains of himself, but to that which he wishes others to entertain of him. Pride is indifferent to the approbation of others; as modesty shrinks from it, either through bashfulness, or from an unwillingness to take any undue advantage of it. I have known several very forward, loquacious, and even overbearing persons, whose confidential communications were oppressive from the sense they entertained of their own demerits. In company they talked on in mere bravado, and for fear of betraying their weak side, as children make a noise in the dark.
CVIII. True modesty and true pride are much the same thing. Both consist in setting a just value on ourselves—neither more nor less. It is a want of proper spirit to fancy ourselves inferior to others in those things in which we really excel them. It is conceit and want of common-sense to arrogate a superiority over others, without the most well-founded pretensions.
CIX. A man may be justly accused of vanity and presumption, who either thinks he possesses qualifications which he has not, or greatly overrates those which he has. An egotist does not think well of himself because he possesses certain qualities, but fancies he possesses a number of excellences, because he thinks well of himself through mere idle self-complacency. True moderation is the bounding of our self-esteem within the extent of our acquirements.
CX. Conceit is the most contemptible and one of the most odious qualities in the world. It is vanity driven from all other shifts, and forced to appeal to itself for admiration. An author, whose play has been damned overnight, feels a paroxysm of conceit the next morning. Conceit may be defined as a restless, overweening, petty, obtrusive, mechanical delight in our own qualifications, without any reference to their real value, or to the approbation of others, merely because they are ours, and for no other reason whatever. It is the extreme of selfishness and folly.
CXI. Confidence or courage is conscious ability—the sense of power. No man is ever afraid of attempting what he knows he can do better than any one else. Charles Fox felt no diffidence in addressing the House of Commons: he was reserved and silent in company, and had no opinion of his talent for writing; that is, he knew his powers and their limits. The torrent of his eloquence rushed upon him from his knowledge of the subject and his interest in it, unchecked and unbidden, without his once thinking of himself or his hearers. As a man is strong, so is he bold. The thing is, that wherever we feel at home, there we are at our ease. The late Sir John Moore once had to review the troops at Plymouth before the King; and while he was on the ground and had to converse with the different persons of the court, with the ladies, and with Mr Pitt whom he thought a great man, he found himself a good deal embarrassed; but the instant he mounted his horse and the troops were put in motion, he felt quite relieved, and had leisure to observe what an awkward figure Mr Pitt made on horseback.
CXII. The truly proud man knows neither superiors nor inferiors. The first he does not admit of: the last he does not concern himself about. People who are insolent to those beneath them crouch to those above them. Both shew equal meanness of spirit and want of conscious dignity.
CXIII. No elevation or success raises the humble man in his own opinion. To the proud the slightest repulse or disappointment is the last indignity. The vain man makes a merit of misfortune, and triumphs in his disgrace.