It is curious that our own offenses¹ should seem so much less heinous² 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 untoward⁴ events to consider them, find it easy to condone⁵ 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 hem³, but by an image that we have formed of ourselves from which we have left out everything that offends our vanity or would discredit⁶ us in the eyes of the world. To take a trivial stance: how scornful we are when we catch someone out telling a lie; but who can say that he has ever told not one, but a hundred?

 

There is not much to choose between men. They are all a hotchpotch of greatness and tininess, of virtue⁷ and vice⁸, 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 initially⁹ 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 tolerance¹⁰ to oneself as well as to others. It is well also if they enable us to look upon our fellows, even the most eminent¹¹ and respectable, with humor, and if they lead us to take ourselves not too seriously.

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