SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 81 



of jealousy, of fear, or of unrequited affection, 

 tliere are a hundred who suffer from the terrible, 

 pressing, and ever-present demon of mere self-con- 

 sciousness. 



It is not a vice, or, at least, only a very small 

 one ; it is not even a failing, or a weakness, or a 

 ])eccadillo ; it is, after all, a pure misfortune. It 

 injures nobody but the person himself who feels it 

 — or perhaps one ought rather to say the {)erson 

 lierself who is its subject ; for, tliough men and 

 women alike suffer in secret from this horrible 

 scourge, it chooses its victims most particularly 

 among the young, the timid, the modest, and the 

 beautiful of the fairer sex. A phiLanthropist who 

 had it in his power to abolish, if he chose, with a 

 single wave of his hand either small-pox or self- 

 consciousness, would probably do more in the end 

 to diminish human suffering and to increase hu- 

 man hap[)iness if he elected to get rid by a heroic 

 choice of the less obtrusive but more insidious 

 and all-pervading disease. For small-pox, at the 

 worst, attacks only a very insignificant fraction of 

 the whole community ; while every second person 

 that one meets in society, especially below the age 

 of fifty years, is a confirmed sufferer from the 

 pangs of self-consciousness. 



Of course, to be self-conscious is a very different 

 thing indeed from being conceited or egotistic, 

 and still more different from being absolutely and 



