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.
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