SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 39 



and grows and expands often in the midst of 

 absolute ignorance as to their private life and per- 

 sonality. 



For the fact is, nobody, as a rule, is much inter- 

 ested in other people's most internal personality. 

 An autobiography, unless it be the autobiograpliy 

 of a ver}' great or a very peculiar personage, rarely 

 excites much attention among general readers. 

 Self has been well described, indeed, as that sub- 

 ject upon which all men are fluent and none agree- 

 able. Hence even geniuses, when profoundly 

 self-conscious, fail to interest any save their own 

 I)assing generation. After-ages get tired of their 

 distorted pictures of what they take to be their 

 own souls. They turn rather to the really great 

 objective writers, the Homers and Shakspeares 

 and Chancers and Molieres, who never trouble at 

 all about themselves, but put upon the canvas 

 before us the living images of men and women, 

 n even exceptional natures, then, thus fail to 

 attact us when too self-conscious, how can ordi- 

 nary e very-day average people hope to prove 

 acceptable to one another, unless they make an 

 effort to cast aside this perpetual habit of thinking 

 of nothing but their own idiosyncrasy? The self- 

 conscious should make a deliberate attempt to free 

 themselves from the trammels of their own point 

 of view, — to think of others, to feel for others, to 

 sympathize with others, and to forget self in the 



