For if we could get rid of our sense of annoyance,
we should see that he is here reaching a higher stage, coming into his
heritage and obtaining a life of his own. Formerly he lived merely the
life of those about him. He laid a self-conscious grasp on nothing of
his own. When now at length he does lay that grasp, we must permit him
to be awkward, and to us disagreeable. We should aid him through the
inaccurate, slow, and fatiguing period of his existence until, having
tested many tracts of life and learned in them how to mechanize
desirable conduct, he comes back on their farther side to a childhood
more beautiful than the original. Many a man and woman possesses this
disciplined childhood through life. Goodness seems the very atmosphere
they breathe, and everything they do to be exactly fitting. Their acts
are performed with full self-expression, yet without strut or
intrusion of consciousness. Whatever comes from them is happily
blended and organized into the entirety of life. Such should be our
aim. We should seek to be born again, and not to remain where we were
originally born.
V
In what has now been said there is a good deal of comfort for those
who suffer the pains of self-consciousness, previously described. They
need not seek a lower degree of self-consciousness, but only to
distribute more wisely what they now possess.
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