His truly
honourable qualities remain in their primordial innocence; he cannot see
them and he cannot spoil them. If a man's mind is erroneously possessed
with the idea that he is a great violinist, that need not prevent his
being a gentleman and an honest man. But if once his mind is possessed
in any strong degree with the knowledge that he is a gentleman, he will
soon cease to be one.
But there is a third kind of satisfaction of which I have noticed one or
two examples lately--another kind of satisfaction which is neither a
pleasure in the virtues that we do possess nor a pleasure in the virtues
we do not possess. It is the pleasure which a man takes in the presence
or absence of certain things in himself without ever adequately asking
himself whether in his case they constitute virtues at all. A man will
plume himself because he is not bad in some particular way, when the
truth is that he is not good enough to be bad in that particular way.
Some priggish little clerk will say, "I have reason to congratulate
myself that I am a civilised person, and not so bloodthirsty as the Mad
Mullah." Somebody ought to say to him, "A really good man would be less
bloodthirsty than the Mullah.
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