herradura que chacolotea clavo le falta—­a clattering hoof means a nail gone.  To be sure, as I said at first, no man ought to let the reins go quite loose, and show himself just as he is; for there are many evil and bestial sides to our nature which require to be hidden away out of sight; and this justifies the negative attitude of dissimulation, but it does not justify a positive feigning of qualities which are not there.  It should also be remembered that affectation is recognized at once, even before it is clear what it is that is being affected.  And, finally, affectation cannot last very long, and one day the mask will fall off. Nemo potest personam diu ferre fictam, says Seneca;[1] ficta cito in naturam suam recidunt—­no one can persevere long in a fictitious character; for nature will soon reassert itself.

[Footnote 1:  De Clementia, I. 1.]

SECTION 31.  A man bears the weight of his own body without knowing it, but he soon feels the weight of any other, if he tries to move it; in the same way, a man can see other people’s shortcoming’s and vices, but he is blind to his own.  This arrangement has one advantage:  it turns other people into a kind of mirror, in which a man can see clearly everything that is vicious, faulty, ill-bred and loathsome in his own nature; only, it is generally the old story of the dog barking at is own image; it is himself that he sees and not another dog, as he fancies.

He who criticises others, works at the reformation of himself.  Those who form the secret habit of scrutinizing other people’s general behavior, and passing severe judgment upon what they do and leave undone, thereby improve themselves, and work out their own perfection:  for they will have sufficient sense of justice, or at any rate enough pride and vanity, to avoid in their own case that which they condemn so harshly elsewhere.  But tolerant people are just the opposite, and claim for themselves the same indulgence that they extend to others—­hanc veniam damus petimusque vicissim.  It is all very well for the Bible to talk about the mote in another’s eye and the beam in one’s own.  The nature of the eye is to look not at itself but at other things; and therefore to observe and blame faults in another is a very suitable way of becoming conscious of one’s own.  We require a looking-glass for the due dressing of our morals.

The same rule applies in the case of style and fine writing.  If, instead of condemning, you applaud some new folly in these matters, you will imitate it.  That is just why literary follies have such vogue in Germany.  The Germans are a very tolerant people—­everybody can see that!  Their maxim is—­Hanc veniam damns petimusque vicissim.

SECTION 32.  When he is young, a man of noble character fancies that the relations prevailing amongst mankind, and the alliances to which these relations lead, are at bottom and essentially, ideal in their nature; that is to say, that they rest upon similarity of disposition or sentiment, or taste, or intellectual power, and so on.