And there is no reason why she should not know it. If a woman does not know her points, according to a high authority, she cannot even dress well; only, experience has proved that the less men and women think about their strong points, except, of course, when they are dressing, the better; for there is no more certain way of committing suicide on the higher moral nature than by falling in love with ourselves. In reference to this matter, therefore, it may be thought that the other and less common extreme is the more safe--it is better to think too lowly of ourselves than too highly. And it is a fact, capable of being proved from a hundred biographies, that the greatest men have been the least given to self-glorification; that modesty, as is commonly said, {163} is the invariable accompaniment of genuine power, while forward conceit, and empty inflation, and boastful exhibition of all kinds, are the natural characteristics of the young, the superficial, and the small. The under-estimate of self often found in connexion with the highest genius, especially in the early period of its experiments, arises naturally from the high ideal of perfection, by the contemplation of which excellence grows. No young man who puts a few well-adjusted and well-toned figures together on a piece of canvas can know, and certainly ought never to imagine, that he carries Raphael and Michael Angelo, and something better than both perhaps, in his bosom. But though this be true, I do not know whether I have not seen more sad mistakes made in life by persons who were rather depressed by too little than elevated by too much self-esteem. I have sometimes thought that the conceit so natural to young men is given to them by a gracious provision as a superfluity that is sure to be pruned off. The world is constantly employed in pulling down outrageous conceit; but when a poor fellow starts in the hot race of life, afflicted with that disease which the Greeks call δυσωπία, or _difficult-facedness_--that is, so modest as not to be able to look a fellow-being in the face--I must confess, though I have a kindly feeling towards a person so deficient which I never can have to the smart and pert self-conscious mannikin, I feel that the defect of the one is a much greater misfortune, and a malady much more difficult to cure, than the excess of the other. With some persons, and indeed whole families, the tendency to underrate their own capacity acts like a positive taint in the blood; it cuts the wing from hope, dulls the nerve {164} of aspiration, and palsies the arm of action. It makes an honest man useless where God has put him, and opens the door for a dishonest man with a little natural confidence to do badly what the honest man for sheer lack of confidence has not been able to do at all. The man of defective self-esteem thus commits two great wrongs--he wrongs himself, because he allows himself to be shunted out of his natural