CONCEIT. T HE President of Magdalen College, Oxford, in the very
interesting address which he has just published on " Education and Equality," •—perhaps "Education and In- equality " would have hit the exact drift of his thought more exactly,—remarks that "Conceit is not, I think, a very prevalent fault among the young at this time. I am tempted at times, though it is not a very pleasant fault, to wish there were more of it, if it would lead young people to attempting more." We are not quite sure that conceit does always lead those who possess it to attempt much. Conceit, if it means a high opinion of one's self, may very often deter a man from attempting much lest he should wound his own opinion of himself by failure. Those who have the greatest self-confidence are by no means always the most conceited, and those who are the most conceited are not unfrequently very diffident in action. Mere conceit is often very easily daunted, and dreads so much to be daunted that it shrinks from the kind of action which would bring home to itself the painful thought of personal incompetence. On the other hand, true self- confidence is often a more or less modest quality which, in spite of its immense reliance on the possibilities within, is perfectly conscious that it must make many blunders, and go through much travail before it can justify its own confi- dence that it can achieve something worth achieving by its endeavours. We doubt whether conceit and self-confidence are often combined. Sometimes they certainly are, espe- cially in the young, who have not had much experience of their own failures. But except in cases of very exceptional feebleness of intellect, self-confidence is usually a good sign of resourcefulness, though it may have to hear many shocks
• Landon: Edward Stanford.
before it acquires any true conception of its own limita- tions; while mere conceit without self-confidence is not a good sign at all, and very often goes with a general barrenness of nature and a most dangerous power of feeding itself on empty dreams. The merely conceited man is so satisfied with himself that he never comes to know himself truly. The man whose self-confidence is justified by a great elasticity of character, a great power of trying and trying again till he reaches a really high average of achievement, is not at all disposed to feed himself on empty dreams, and has a very clear consciousness of his own failures as well as of his own successes. For every self-reliant man who is more or less pleased with himself on the whole, there are probably three or four who, in spite of feeling sure that they can suc- ceed in the end, are quite as often disgusted with their own failures as pleased with their own successes. The man of true genius is often, of course, pleased with himself, because he so often hits the point he is aiming at. But short of true genius, the conceited man is apt to be an ass, while men of great ability who have no great intuitions, though they have confidence in their power to master their object ultimately, are as full of disgust at their failures as they are of modest self-satisfaction when at last they succeed. Mere conceit gives no stamina to the character, while the sense of a con- siderable reserve of strength, even in the very moment of failure,—which furnishes the true criterion of self-reliance,— can hardly exist without giving good grounds for hope.
Again, we should not quite agree with Mr. Warren that conceit is seldom a pleasant fault. Simple conceit, founded on really great gifts, is often a very pleasant quality. No more amiable quality than the conceit, say, of Hans Christian Andersen, can easily be imagined, though it caused him a hundred bitter trials in his earlier life before his great gifts were understood and acknowledged by the world. So, too, Goldsmith's conceit was a very attaching quality; and in our own day we could name a great poet full of the most amiable and attractive conceit, in which there was not anything irritating or even indicative of jealous mortification. The truth is that sunny conceit founded on great gifts, is often delightful, while the conceit which broods ou the world's injustice in not recognising to the full these great gifts, is corroding and repelling. The happy conceit which takes all the recognition it can get with gratitude, and supplements it with sincere pity for those who have no sufficient insight to recognise the gifts that have been displayed, is as charming and radiant a quality as we can find anywhere, while the jealous conceit which is always suspicions of the inadequacy of the world's admiration, is one of the most unpleasant and displeasing of characteristics. In other words, the conceit which is perfectly joyous, but of course founded in true gifts, attracts, while the less perfect conceit which has a little distrust, on one side or other, of the solidity of its own genius, is displeasing, because not serene. The former is as cheering as sunshine, the latter as displeasing as rest- lessness. But we question whether even the sunny self- satisfaction which gives so elastic and serene an air to those who display it in perfection, is as full of general good consequences to the nature of those who radiate it as it seems to be. Of course it is a great thing to feel a permanent spring of serenity always within you, and nothing can be more distressing than the opposite temperament,—the tem- perament which seems to be always bubbling over with fretfulness at one's own shortcomings. But what is really the happiest, though one of the rarest, of all temperaments, is that which finds at least as much spring of delight in the great qualities of others as it does in its own higher qualities. Conceit is not a bad quality when it is founded on a real basis of power and insight, except so far as it occupies a man too much with himself, and therefore renders him less sensible than he should be, as it generally does, to the equally good or better qualities in others ; but as it usually has this unfortunate effect of blinding us to the relative value of the qualities in others which we do not possess, con- ceit, as a general rule, does shut us out from the enjoyment of more light and warmth and power of character, than it can ever open our eyes to.
However we must admit that when what we roughly term conceit is really !es3 conceit than sele-confidence
founded on true capacity, as it often is, it is one of the best spurs to the active energies of man that it is possible to conceive. Able men do all the more for being confident in themselves, and even for attaching far more importance to their work than from a strictly detached point of view they could or would attach. Just as conceit with no jest foundation (and it not unfrequently has no just founda- tion at all) is one of the most misleading will-o'-the-wisps which ever guided men into a swamp, so self-confidence, well and solidly founded on capacity, is one of the most effective of stimulants to hard and efficient work. Just think what an effect his friends' conception of Dickens as "the in- comparable " had upon him in stirring him to the laborious literary life he led, and the laborious separate career which he afterwards led as a reader to numerous audiences of passages from his own works. It is impossible to believe that he would ever have produced one half what he did produce if he had not been goaded on by the increasing desire to surpass himself in his friends' estimation. But we must also admit that the same high,—even overweening,— idea of his own genius rendered him impervious to the merits of other authors from whom he would otherwise have learned that in which he himself was defective. But then, had he learned this and taken it well to heart, would not the first result have been to have put a drag upon his creative power, and perhaps really to have strangled some of his most popular and brilliant efforts ? Had he ever become a great critic, Dickens would never have been the popular author he was. The power of discerning the faults in his own work would have been all but fatal to the eager self-confidence which enabled him to multiply so largely his rich stores of humour and observation. The man who believes profoundly in himself can do a very great deal more than the man who can look round himself and say, ' This you can do, and this you cannot.' And the ideal we should really hold up to ourselves from a moral point of view, namely, the man whose conceit of himself is nothing to his belief in others, and who fairly knows when he has done what is poor, quite as distinctly as he knows when he has hit the very bull's-eye, would probably spend half his life-time in studying the plan of works which he would never achieve, and yearning after ideals that are really beyond him. What conceited self-confidence really effects is to keep a man's attention fixed on the rather narrow sphere of his own creative force. It must be a man of transcendent genius who can, not only see all his own limitations and appreciate the greatest qualities in those whom he knows that he can never rival, but can work with all his might and all his mind in achieving that of which he can see the faults, and even see faults which do not exist in the works of his friends and rivals. It is true, as the President of Magdalen says, that education develops inequalities rather than equalities ; but then by doing so, it often paralyses power which would be all the more fruitful if it were blind to its own shortcomings.
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