“Every day a panorama moved before me of changing personalities, who reenacted the events of the story.  Finally the obsession took such a strong hold of me that I began to talk about it in a manner that aroused the fears of my parents.

“The screen was banished from my room and when, a few days later, it was brought back for me to see, I was able to discover nothing more in it than the designs with which it was adorned.”

This example, taken directly from life, shows us better than the most extended arguments the dangers of moral isolation.

By this we do not mean the isolation that is essential to concentration, the practise of which always leads to the most fruitful results.

We are speaking solely of the aloofness born of timidity or of exaggerated pride, which, in depriving us of contrary views, develops in us the propensity to see things from only one angle, which is always that which happens to flatter our vanity or please our tastes.

All those persons who suffer from this disease of the will, which deprives them of the ability of discussing things, may be compared to runners who have neglected to ascertain the limits of their race.

Like the latter, they keep running round the same track without any means of discovering when they are nearing the goal.

Instead of stopping, when they have reached it, they keep running forward and the monotony of their efforts, coupled with the fever-heat engendered by their exertions, very soon causes them to view the objects that they keep passing and passing under a deformed and distorted aspect.

The man of reason, on the other hand, runs with the single purpose in his mind of reaching the winning-post.  He studiously avoids taking his eyes off the goal, which he has carefully located in advance, and takes pains to note the moment when he is nearing it, so as to run no risks of making his spurt too soon.

It is a matter of frequent observation that timidity often voluntarily assumes the role of effrontery, from very despair of successfully accomplishing the task it is ambitious to perform.

Illustrious examples of this contention are not lacking.  Rousseau, who was a coward of the greatest hardihood, says in his Confessions: 

“My foolish and unreasoning fear, that I was quite unable to overcome, of perpetrating some breach of good manners led me to assume the attitude of caring nothing for the niceties of life.”

A little further on, he adds: 

“I was made a cynic by shyness.  I posed as a despiser of the politeness I did not know how to practise.”

This is a much more frequent cause than one might think of the exhibition of an effrontery which is apparently deliberate and intentional.

The timid man, feeling himself awkward and clownish when performing the usual acts of courtesy, assumes the attitude of caring nothing for them and of avoiding them deliberately, while all the while he is tortured by the inability to perform them without seeming ridiculous.