A pupil may lean the various notes on an instrument of music, or the different position in fencing; and when he makes a mistake, as he is sure to do, however hard he tries, he is apt to think it will be impossible to observe the rules, when he is set to read music at sight or challenged to a furious duel.  But for all that, gradual practice makes him perfect, through a long series of slips, blunders and fresh efforts.  It is just the same in other things; in learning to write and speak Latin, a man will forget the grammatical rules; it is only by long practice that a blockhead turns into a courtier, that a passionate man becomes shrewd and worldly-wise, or a frank person reserved, or a noble person ironical.  But though self-discipline of this kind is the result of long habit, it always works by a sort of external compulsion, which Nature never ceases to resist and sometimes unexpectedly overcomes.  The difference between action in accordance with abstract principles, and action as the result of original, innate tendency, is the same as that between a work of art, say a watch—­where form and movement are impressed upon shapeless and inert matter—­and a living organism, where form and matter are one, and each is inseparable from the other.

There is a maxim attributed to the Emperor Napoleon, which expresses this relation between acquired and innate character, and confirms what I have said:  everything that is unnatural is imperfect;—­a rule of universal application, whether in the physical or in the moral sphere.  The only exception I can think of to this rule is aventurine,[1] a substance known to mineralogists, which in its natural state cannot compare with the artificial preparation of it.

[Footnote 1:  Translator’s Note.  Aventurine is a rare kind of quartz; and the same name is given to a brownish-colored glass much resembling it, which is manufactured at Murano.  It is so called from the fact that the glass was discovered by chance (arventura).]

And in this connection let me utter a word of protest against any and every form of affectation.  It always arouses contempt; in the first place, because it argues deception, and the deception is cowardly, for it is based on fear; and, secondly, it argues self-condemnation, because it means that a man is trying to appear what he is not, and therefore something which he things better than he actually is.  To affect a quality, and to plume yourself upon it, is just to confess that you have not got it.  Whether it is courage, or learning, or intellect, or wit, or success with women, or riches, or social position, or whatever else it may be that a man boasts of, you may conclude by his boasting about it that that is precisely the direction in which he is rather weak; for if a man really possesses any faculty to the full, it will not occur to him to make a great show of affecting it; he is quite content to know that he has it.  That is the application of the Spanish proverb: