A man is great or small according as he leans to the one or the other of these views of life.

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People of very brilliant ability think little of admitting their errors and weaknesses, or of letting others see them.  They look upon them as something for which they have duly paid; and instead of fancying that these weaknesses are a disgrace to them, they consider they are doing them an honor.  This is especially the case when the errors are of the kind that hang together with their qualities—­conditiones sine quibus non—­or, as George Sand said, les defauts de ses vertus.

Contrarily, there are people of good character and irreproachable intellectual capacity, who, far from admitting the few little weaknesses they have, conceal them with care, and show themselves very sensitive to any suggestion of their existence; and this, just because their whole merit consists in being free from error and infirmity.  If these people are found to have done anything wrong, their reputation immediately suffers.

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With people of only moderate ability, modesty is mere honesty; but with those who possess great talent, it is hypocrisy.  Hence, it is just as becoming in the latter to make no secret of the respect they bear themselves and no disguise of the fact that they are conscious of unusual power, as it is in the former to be modest.  Valerius Maximus gives some very neat examples of this in his chapter on self-confidence, de fiducia sui.

* * * * *

Not to go to the theatre is like making one’s toilet without a mirror.  But it is still worse to take a decision without consulting a friend.  For a man may have the most excellent judgment in all other matters, and yet go wrong in those which concern himself; because here the will comes in and deranges the intellect at once.  Therefore let a man take counsel of a friend.  A doctor can cure everyone but himself; if he falls ill, he sends for a colleague.

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In all that we do, we wish, more or less, to come to the end; we are impatient to finish and glad to be done.  But the last scene of all, the general end, is something that, as a rule, we wish as far off as may be.

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Every parting gives a foretaste of death; every coming together again a foretaste of the resurrection.  This is why even people who were indifferent to each other, rejoice so much if they come together again after twenty or thirty years’ separation.

* * * * *

Intellects differ from one another in a very real and fundamental way:  but no comparison can well be made by merely general observations.  It is necessary to come close, and to go into details; for the difference that exists cannot be seen from afar; and it is not easy to judge by outward appearances, as in the several cases of education, leisure and occupation.  But even judging by these alone, it must be admitted that many a man has a degree of existence at least ten times as high as another—­in other words, exists ten times as much.