Nevertheless, in self-judgment, it is right to apply severely to ourselves the rules of reason and virtue so far as our own nature permits. It is to be noted that witty people, or those with a good memory, are not the most capable of clear and profound judgment. Assimilation is prejudicial to reflection; memory is not thought. When our own ideas are clear to us, we shall not judge others without due study of their reasons for what they do, the motives by which they have been governed, the circumstances which may have influenced their estimate of good and evil. Thus our attitude will be more kindly, and we shall avoid all the evils springing from injustice and false judgment. Our own conscience is not always in the ascendant. We often yield to weakness, and it is only just that our knowledge of the limitations of the human will should move us to indulgence towards our fellow-men. Such indulgence consists in recognising our own weaknesses, and in not condemning others for what we consider their errors. The first condition for judging clearly and soundly is the constant attention to our mental life, acknowledging to ourselves our own changes of mood, ceaselessly fighting the enemy within us. From the altruistic point of view, we should picture to ourselves the person to be judged in the circumstances which have prompted his action--difficult though it be to perceive the differences between characters and shades of feeling--according to the numberless cases in which such action takes place. This is the reason why historians, in the act of composition, so often pass false judgments on the past. In their desire to make the characters live again, to call up vanished scenes, they become partisans, loving or hating those whom they have never known. Purely in deference to their own opinion, they fail in tolerance and indulgence. They do not estimate the worth of men of past days according to the moral tone of the epoch in which they lived; they judge of a society as a whole in the light of isolated documents, so that the men of vanished ages cut but a poor figure in their eyes to-day. Now, the truth is that men are no greater now than in the other ages of the world. Removed from our own time by twenty-two centuries, the heroes of Plutarch remain as noble as our heroes of to-day; and in the domain of science, religion, and philosophy we have but changed names without changing at all in judgment and logic, without modifying the conditions of happiness or the outward signs of courage, and without developing the human “_I_.” THE FEAR OF RIDICULE The fear of ridicule is a terrible and powerful weapon in the eyes of many people. Cleverly handled by those who are slaves to custom and fashion, this fear of ridicule often prevents our obeying our true feelings, and leads us to act against our own interests.