Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/101

 EXTENT, DEGBEE, AND UNITY IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 85 his eyes turned away from the springs of passion that move him. The other learns to see himself in every errant act if only he take pains to look at his motives afterwards. He sees himself as jealous, mean, cruel, selfish, cowardly, affec- tionate, true, faithful, sympathetic, hospitable, brave. No doubt the Pharisee and the Publican were extremes of these two types, and it is easy to see that the after-reflexions of the Publican might be the more conducive to improvement for the future. Lack of self-knowledge is the characteristic psychological defect of the "righteous who need no re- pentance," and the Pharisee of the parable so rightly abhorred is the man who, in defect of self-knowledge, reflects upon and approves himself. The feeling that proved liability to error makes a man more human is justified by the fact that it makes him more conscious of the limits in his own nature. A man is not more human because he is more faulty but because he is more conscious of the disintegrating forces in his own soul. The best type is that of the man who by their pressure learns to know these forces but is able to maintain his whole as conscience against them. It should be noticed, however, that the knowledge of error may carry the consequence of an attempt to justify it not by reason but by reasons. Or even without this attempt at sophistication, the man, having erred, may harden himself in his error in defiance of reason and his better instincts. A child, on provocation, has broken his instinct or habit of truthfulness. In the first place, a lie henceforth looks more possible to him than it did before ; the effect of a single breach of habit is enormous. This is the beginning of that process of "hardening the heart," the antidote to which is the repentance that renews the broken habit and looks back on the breach with shame and horror. More serious still than the simple " hardening of the heart " is the sophisti- cation of the reason, by which the authority of the broken habit is explained away. Educated minds seldom " harden the heart " without some attempt to " sophisticate the reason ". Indeed they are perhaps more apt than the uneducated to take their errors thus impenitently, because they cling more to the ideal of acting under reason. This is se^-righteousness without the righteousness. As another illustration it may be noted that the biographers of great men often do them serious injustice by a similar sophisticated gloss of their errors, by which the reader is given the unfair impression that they themselves were self- righteous in wrong-doing. The true defence of a great