find yourself to be in any wise any of these.  Take steady means to check yourself in whatever fault you have ascertained, and justly accused yourself of.  And as soon as you are in active way of mending, you will be no more inclined to moan over an undefined corruption.  For the rest, you will find it less easy to uproot faults, than to choke them by gaining virtues.  Do not think of your faults; still less of others’ faults:  in every person who comes near you, look for what is good and strong:  honor that; rejoice in it; and, as you can, try to imitate it:  and your faults will drop off like dead leaves, when their time comes.  If, on looking back, your whole life should seem rugged as a palm-tree stem; still, never mind, so long as it has been growing; and has its grand green shade of leaves, and weight of honeyed fruit, at top.  And even if you cannot find much good in yourself at last, think that it does not much matter to the universe either what you were, or are; think how many people are noble, if you cannot be; and rejoice in their nobleness.  An immense quantity of modern confession of sin, even when honest, is merely a sickly egotism; which will rather gloat over its own evil, than lose the centralization of its interest in itself.

Mary.  But then, if we ought to forget ourselves so much, how did the old Greek proverb “Know thyself” come to be so highly esteemed?

L. My dear, it is the proverb of proverbs; Apollo’s proverb, and the sun’s—­but do you think you can know yourself by looking into yourself?  Never.  You can know what you are, only by looking out of yourself.  Measure your own powers with those of others; compare your own interests with those of others; try to understand what you appear to them, as well as what they appear to you; and judge of yourselves, in all things, relatively and subordinately; not positively:  starting always with a wholesome conviction of the probability that there is nothing particular about you.  For instance, some of you perhaps think you can write poetry.  Dwell on your own feelings; and doings:—­and you will soon think yourselves Tenth Muses; but forget your own feeling; and try, instead, to understand a line or two of Chaucer or Dante:  and you will soon begin to feel yourselves very foolish girls—­which is much like the fact.

So, something which befalls you may seem a great misfortune,—­you meditate over its effects on you personally:  and begin to think that it is a chastisement, or a warning, or a this or that or the other of profound significance; and that all the angels in heaven have left their business for a little while, that they may watch its effects on your mind.  But give up this egotistic indulgence of your fancy; examine a little what misfortunes, greater a thousand-fold, are happening, every second, to twenty times worthier persons:  and your self-consciousness will change into pity and humility; and you will know yourself so far as to understand that “there hath nothing taken thee but what is common to man.”