It is curious that our own offenses should seem so much less heinous than that of others.
I suppose the reason is that we know all the circumstances that have occasioned them and
so manage to excuse in ourselves what we cannot excuse in others. We turn our attention
away from our own defects, and when we are forced by untoward events to consider them,
find it easy to condone them. For all I know we are right to do this; they are part of us
and we must accept the good and bad in ourselves together.
But when we come to judge others, it is not by ourselves as we really are that we judge hem,
but by an image that we have formed of ourselves from which we have left out everything that
offends our vanity or would discredit us in the eyes of the world. To take a trivial stance:
how scornful we are when we catch someone out telling a lie; but who can say that he has
ever told not one, but a hundred?
There is not much to choose between men. They are all a hotchpotch of greatness and littleness,
of virtue and vice, of nobility and baseness. Some have more strength of character, or more
opportunity, and so in one direction or another give their instincts freer play, but potentially
they are the same. For my part, I do not think I am any better or any worse than most people,
but I know that if I set down every action in my life and every thought that has crossed my
mind, the world would consider me a monster of depravity. The knowledge that these reveries
are common to all men should inspire one with tolerance to oneself as well as to others. It
is well also if they enable us to look upon our fellows, even the most eminent and
respectable, with humor, and if they lead us to take ourselves not too seriously.