(67.) Men speak of themselves in such a manner, that though they admit they are guilty of some trifling faults, these very faults imply noble talents or great qualities. Thus they complain of a bad memory, though quite satisfied with the large amount of common sense and sound judgment they possess; submit to being reproached for absence of mind and musing, imagining them the concomitants of intelligence; acknowledge being awkward and not able to do anything with their hands, and comfort themselves for being without these small qualities by the knowledge of possessing those of the understanding or those innate feelings which every one allows them. In owning their indolence they always intimate they are disinterested and entirely cured of ambition; they are not ashamed of being slovenly, which shows they merely are careless of little things, and seems to imply that they solely occupy themselves with solid and important matters. A military man affects to say that it was rashness or curiosity which carried him into the trenches on a certain day, or in a dangerous spot, without being on duty or ordered to do so; and he adds that the general reprimanded him for it. Thus a man possessing brains or a solid genius and an innate circumspection which other men endeavour in vain to acquire; a man who has strengthened his mind by a long experience; to whom the number, weight, variety, difficulty, and importance of affairs merely procure some occupation without embarrassing him; who, by his extensive knowledge and penetration masters all events; who does not consult all the remarks ever written on the art of governments and politics, but is, perhaps, one of those sublime minds created to sway others, and from whose example those rules were first made; who is diverted, by the great things he does, from those pleasant and agreeable things he might read, and who, on the contrary, loses nothing by recapitulating and turning over, as it were, his own life and actions: a man, so constituted, may easily, and without compromising himself, admit that he knows nothing of books and never reads.[556] (68.) Men intend sometimes to conceal their imperfections, or attenuate the opinion of others about them, by frankly acknowledging them. “I am very ignorant,” says some man who knows nothing; “I am getting old,” says a second above threescore; “I am far from rich,” says a third who is wretchedly poor. (69.) There is either no such thing as modesty, or it is mistaken for something quite different, if we think it to be an inward sentiment, debasing man in his own eyes, and which is a supernatural virtue we call humility. Man naturally thinks of himself with pride and conceit, and thinks thus of no one but himself; modesty only aims at modifying this disposition so that no one shall suffer by it; it is an external virtue, which commands our looks, gait, words, tone of voice, and obliges a man ostensibly to act with others as if in reality he did not despise them.