You cannot yet be at all sensible of the dangers I am now pointing out to you. You cannot yet understand the consequences of your present want of self-control in this particular point. The light of the future alone can waken them out of present darkness into distinct and fatal prominence.
Habit has not yet formed into an isolating chain that refinement of mind and loftiness of character which your want of self-control may convert into misfortunes instead of blessings. Whenever, even now, a sense of total want of sympathy forces itself upon you, you console yourself with such thoughts as these: "Sheep herd together, eagles fly alone,"[57]&c.
Small consolation this, even for the pain your loneliness inflicts on yourself, still less for the breach of duties it involves.
There must, besides, be much danger in a habit of mind that leads you to attribute to your own superiority those very unpleasantnesses which would have no existence if that superiority were more complete. For, in truth, if your spiritual nature asserted its due authority over the animal, you would habitually exercise the power which is freely offered you, of supreme control over the hidden movements of your heart as well as over the outward expression of the lips.
I would strongly urge you to consider every evidence of your isolation--of your want of sympathy with others--as marks of moral inferiority; then, from your conscientiousness of mind, you would seek anxiously to discover the causes of such isolation, and you would endeavour to remove them.
Nothing is more difficult than the perpetual self-control necessary for this purpose. Constant watchfulness is required to subdue every feeling of superiority in the contemplation of your own character, and constant watchfulness to look upon the words and actions of others through, as it were, a rose-coloured medium. The mind of man has been aptly compared to cut glass, which reflects the very same light in various colours as well as different shapes, according to the forms of the glass. Display then the mental superiority of which you are justly conscious, by moulding your mind into such forms as will represent the words and actions of others in the most favourable point of view. The same illustration will serve to suggest the best manner of making allowances for those whose minds are unmanageable, because uneducated and undisciplined. They cannot _see_ things in the same point of view that you do; how unreasonable then is it of you to expect that they should form the same estimate of them.