Thus I finally gave up any attempt to make out that I preferred cutting a bad figure, and that I liked to be despised, because in this way I was getting more virtuous than my successful rivals; and I have long looked with suspicion on all views which are recommended as peculiarly consolatory to wounded vanity or other personal disappointment.  The consolations of egoism are simply a change of attitude or a resort to a new kind of diet which soothes and fattens it.  Fed in this way it is apt to become a monstrous spiritual pride, or a chuckling satisfaction that the final balance will not be against us but against those who now eclipse us.  Examining the world in order to find consolation is very much like looking carefully over the pages of a great book in order to find our own name, if not in the text, at least in a laudatory note:  whether we find what we want or not, our preoccupation has hindered us from a true knowledge of the contents.  But an attention fixed on the main theme or various matter of the book would deliver us from that slavish subjection to our own self-importance.  And I had the mighty volume of the world before me.  Nay, I had the struggling action of a myriad lives around me, each single life as dear to itself as mine to me.  Was there no escape here from this stupidity of a murmuring self-occupation?  Clearly enough, if anything hindered my thought from rising to the force of passionately interested contemplation, or my poor pent-up pond of sensitiveness from widening into a beneficent river of sympathy, it was my own dulness; and though I could not make myself the reverse of shallow all at once, I had at least learned where I had better turn my attention.

Something came of this alteration in my point of view, though I admit that the result is of no striking kind.  It is unnecessary for me to utter modest denials, since none have assured me that I have a vast intellectual scope, or—­what is more surprising, considering I have done so little—­that I might, if I chose, surpass any distinguished man whom they wish to depreciate.  I have not attained any lofty peak of magnanimity, nor would I trust beforehand in my capability of meeting a severe demand for moral heroism.  But that I have at least succeeded in establishing a habit of mind which keeps watch against my self-partiality and promotes a fair consideration of what touches the feelings or the fortunes of my neighbours, seems to be proved by the ready confidence with which men and women appeal to my interest in their experience.  It is gratifying to one who would above all things avoid the insanity of fancying himself a more momentous or touching object than he really is, to find that nobody expects from him the least sign of such mental aberration, and that he is evidently held capable of listening to all kinds of personal outpouring without the least disposition to become communicative in the same way.  This confirmation of the hope that my bearing is not that of the self-flattering lunatic