It would be a false assumption to suppose that temporary humiliations or mistakes can rid one definitely and finally of the vice I am describing.  Arrogance seems too closely knit into the very fibre of early success.  The firsthand experience of youth is not sufficient to effect the cure—­and it may be that no years and no experience will purge the mind of this natural tendency.  When Pitt publicly announced at twenty-three that he would never take anything less than Cabinet rank he was undoubtedly arrogant.  He became Premier at twenty-four.  But age and experience moderated his supreme haughtiness, leaving at the end a residue of pure self-confidence which enabled him to bear up against blow after blow in the effort to save the State.

Arrogance, tempered by experience and defeat, may thus produce in the end the most effective type of character.  But it seems a pity that youth should suffer so much in the aftermath while it learns the necessary lessons.  But will youth listen to the advice of middle-age?

For every man youth tramples on in the arrogance of his successful career a hundred enemies will spring up to dog with an implacable dislike the middle of his life.  A fault of manner, a deal pressed too hard in equity, the abruptness by which the old gods are tumbled out to make room for the new—­all these are treasured up against the successful newcomer.  In the very heat of the strife men take no more reckon of these things than of a flesh wound in the middle of a hand-to-hand battle.  It is the after recollection on the part of the vanquished that breeds the sullen resentment rankling against the arrogance of the conqueror.  Years afterwards, when all these things seem to have passed away, and the very recollection of them is dim in the mind of the young man, he will suddenly be struck by an unlooked-for blow dealt from a strange or even a friendly quarter.  He will stagger, as though hit from behind with a stone, and exclaim, “Why did this man hit me suddenly from the dark?” Then searching back in the chamber of his mind he will remember some long past act of arrogance—­conceived of at the time merely as an exertion of legitimate power and ability—­and he will realise that he is paying in maturity for the indiscretions of his youth.

He may be engaged in some scheme for the benefit of a people or a nation in which there is not the faintest trace of self-interest.  He may even be anxious to keep the peace with all men in the pursuit of his aim.  But he may yet be compelled to look with sorrow on the wreck of his idea and pay the default for the antagonisms of his youth.  It is not, perhaps, in the nature of youth to be prudent.  The game seems everything; the penalties either nil or remote.  But if prudence was ever vital in the early years, it is in the avoidance of those unnecessary enmities which arrogance brings in its train.

It might be supposed that middle-age was preaching to youth on a sin it had outlived.  That is not the case.  Unfortunately, arrogance is not confined to any period of life.  But in early age it is a tendency at once most easy to forgive and to cure.  Carried into later years, with no perception of the fault, it becomes incurable.  Worse than that, it usually turns its possessor into a mixture of bore and fool.