Re: Confidence

full of faults and wants. He wants to
be great, and he sees himself small. He wants to be happy, and he sees
himself miserable. He wants to be perfect, and he sees himself full of
imperfections. He wants to be the object of love and esteem among men, and
he sees that his faults merit only their hatred and contempt. This
embarrassment in which he finds himself produces in him the most unrighteous
and criminal passion that can be imagined; for he conceives a mortal enmity
against that truth which reproves him and which convinces him of his faults.
He would annihilate it, but, unable to destroy it in its essence, he
destroys it as far as possible in his own knowledge and in that of others;
that is to say, he devotes all his attention to hiding his faults both from
others and from himself, and he cannot endure either that others should
point them out to him, or that they should see them.

Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to
be full of them and to be unwilling to recognise them, since that is to add
the further fault of a voluntary illusion. We do not like others to deceive
us; we do not think it fair that they should be held in higher esteem by us
than they deserve; it is not, then, fair that we should deceive them and
should wish them to esteem us more highly than we deserve.

Thus, when they discover only the imperfections and vices whic