It is curious that our own offenses should seem so much less heinous than
the offenses of others. I suppose the reason is that we know all the circumstances
that have occasioned them and so manage to excuse in ourselves what we
cannot excuse in others. We turn our attention away from our own defects
, and when we are forced by untoward events to consider them, find it easy
to condone them. For all I know we are right to do this; they are part
of us and we must accept the good and bad in ourselves together. But when
we come to judge others, it is not by ourselves as we really are that
we judge them, but by an image that we have formed of ourselves fro which
we have left out everything that offends our vanity or would discredit
us in the eyes of the world. To take a trivial instance: how scornful
we are when we catch someone out telling a lie; but who can say that he
has never told not one, but a hundred? There is not much to choose between
men. They are all a hotchpotch of greatness and littleness, of virtue
and vice, of nobility and baseness. Some have more strength of character
, or more opportunity, and so in one direction or another give their instincts
freer play, but potentially they are the same. For my part, I do not think
I am any better or any worse than most people, but I know that if I set
down every action in my life and every thought that has crossed my mind
, the world would consider me a monster of depravity. The knowledge that
these reveries are common to all men should inspire one with tolerance
to oneself as well as to others. It is well also if they enable us to
look upon our fellows, even the most eminent and respectable, with humor
, and if they lead us to take ourselves not too seriously.